While beds in the country's intensive care units continue to fill and a contingency plan has already been put in place to recover the oxygen cylinders used over the past year, many of which seem to have disappeared, Kenya is preparing to face a major new problem in containing the virus.
Medicines for initial treatment and for alternative therapies to oxygenation are beginning to run out, and indeed almost all of the most important are already missing from public facilities.
The consequence is that certain essential prescriptions for the most serious cases, such as dexamethasone, have seen prices for the reference drugs rise up to four times the basic cost. Local media report that some private hospitals for a dose of Tocilizumab, which is out of stock in most pharmacies and really effective in reducing the viral load of the virus, are asking Kes. 200,000 per dose (about 1500 euros) and at least two doses are needed for it to be effective.
The shortage of medicines does not only affect public pharmacies and hospitals, and not only Covid-19.
India is one of the main exporters of medicines to Kenya and is struggling with the peak of the third wave. So after blocking the export of double doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by the local institute Serum (1,200,000 had already been delivered to Nairobi, but now the recalls are missing), it has now also blocked the shipment of Remdesivir, one of the most widely used treatments for symptomatic patients, as well as other drugs that can treat many of the side effects of the pandemic, such as thrombosis and kidney problems.