In the Mexican municipality of Huehuetoca, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador inaugurated this Friday the Megapharmacy of Wellbeing, one of the last works of his government and in which he promises to have “all the medicines” to solve the shortage, since the aim is to distribute medicines of all kinds in more than 20 thousand medical units that are part of the public health system.
In his speech, the federal president said that medications will be allocated to more than 16,000 hospitals and health centers that are part of the IMSS-Wellbeing system, while 2,500 will be from the IMSS and 1,200 from the ISSSTE.
“That no one lacks medicine even if they don’t have money because, like food, it is a basic need and it doesn’t matter if the medicines are expensive or rare, or if they are not available or even manufactured in laboratories in Mexico. , but in laboratories in India, France or any other country,” he said.
According to the head of the federal Executive, the pharmacy will also serve as a warehouse for supplies and healing materials, as well as vaccines, so if there are no medications in some medical units, they will be searched in the rest of the units. public institutions so that it is distributed from the closest area.
Likewise, he commented that if any of these medical units do not exist, there will be enough medicines in the Mega pharmacy, so within a period of between 24 and 48 hours the medicines will be delivered to patients who require them free of charge.
“It is possibly the largest pharmacy in the world,” said President López Obrador, who added that despite the smear campaign that was launched against him, there will be a new health system in which people who need it will be channeled. require free of charge.
In addition, he pointed out that previously only ten companies were the beneficiaries of the purchase and distribution of medicines, which offered them at a premium, so they decided to buy them in a consolidated manner to acquire them in other countries and with this he stated that the same amount of economic resources.
“There were 10 companies that did not even produce medicines and they sold 100 billion pesos a year to the government, but they were also in charge of distribution. It was prohibited to buy medicines abroad; they had to be purchased in Mexico, claiming that if they were purchased abroad, the national pharmaceutical industry would be affected; but it was because they had the business, there were even private pharmacies within the IMSS and ISSSTE and it was a monopoly,” he said.
Thus, he promised to return in March to learn how the Megapharmacy works, but he emphasized that the medicine will stop being marketed in an inhumane way to the people who need it most.
The Megapharmacy of Wellbeing, measuring 94,546 square meters and located in the municipality of Huehuetoca, State of Mexico, has 9 hectares to store all medications, in addition to 98 receiving platforms and 102,323 storage spaces.
It has the capacity to house 286 million pieces of medicine in 5,200 square meters, where six shelf batteries and a cold network with ultra-freezers are already installed.
|| With information from El Sol de Toluca and EFE ||