Burundi: Medicine closet empty although children need treatment
In Canada, cough, fever and diarrhea are easily cured with a flick of the doctor’s pen and a few minutes’ wait at the pharmacy. Not so in Burundi, where simple medications are often unavailable or too expensive for many—and the consequences are often deadly.
Four-year-old Syapata arrives at the health clinic with diarrhea, fever and a seemingly permanent cough. She’s been vomiting for two days. Her mother is worried—she knows all too well that the diarrhea alone could kill Syapata. Just last year, the girl’s six-year-old brother died from dehydration cause by diarrhea.
In the exam room, Laetitia Butoyi knows what to do. Syapata is fortunate, there’s medicine in the stock room today. “The little girl has a high fever due probably to an infected cough,” explains Laetitia, immediately providing fever and cough treatment, along with vitamins. She’ll have Syapata’s stool and blood analyzed in the laboratory.
Medicine not always available
The clinic, in a remote location 200 km from Burundi’s capital, is familiar territory for Syapata’s mother. “I have been three times for Syapata in the two past months, when she was suffering from malaria. I was lucky adequate medicine was provided to her every time.”
Malaria has killed six people in the neighborhood in the past few months alone. The mother is convinced that Syapata would have died without the medicine she received from the clinic.
Yet even at this clinic, medicine is not always available. It’s not unusual for the health centre to be short of drugs used for headaches, worms, respiratory diseases and malaria. In a private pharmacy, malaria drugs cost the equivalent of six dollars, and most community members can’t afford it.
“We wish this health center always had the drugs we need as they are very cheap here, but it is not possible as far as I can see," Syapata’s mother added.
Demand exceeds supply
World Vision receives donations from pharmaceutical companies, and has given medicine worth more than $600 thousand to Burundi’s ministry of health. The ministry then passes the medications on to health centres. These include a wide range of antibiotics, de-wormers, oral rehydratation salts and treatment for malaria, Burundi’s leading cause of death among children.
"The drugs have been helping the patients to recover from their respective diseases says Laetitia. "But now the demand is higher than the supply. It is a serious problem here.”
Laetitia hopes to get some other boxes of drugs and medical equipment from the provincial health district as soon as possible. There are some 60 people in the waiting room, mainly women with babies on their hips.
