{"id":56584,"date":"2026-09-16T03:49:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T07:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=56584"},"modified":"2026-09-16T03:49:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T07:49:25","slug":"no-medicine-no-excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=56584","title":{"rendered":"No medicine, no excuses"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Raffique Shah
\nSeptember 12, 2026<\/em> <\/p>\n

Raffique Shah<\/a>To hear the stories being told from four cardinal points of the globe we call our world is to listen to or to read\u2014or worse, experience\u2014the common global issue of pharmaceutical failures. I\u2019m not referring to failures in the sense of malpractice or drug side effects\u2014well, at least that\u2019s not what I\u2019m concentrating on. My problem, as I am sure many others out there will have experienced, is the constant non-availability followed by price gouging of drugs necessary to treat ailments or conditions, if you will, that many people have absolutely no control over.
\n
\nLast week, it was discovered that the main drug used by all Parkinson\u2019s patients was \u201cout of stock\u201d, and that was in two different pharmaceutical brands, namely APO and a brand from Cyprus. Now, forgive me here, but how do suppliers run out of not one but two drugs relevant to the treatment of any disease?<\/p>\n

The funny thing is, I do not know of any other drug locally used to treat Parkinson\u2019s. Anything else will have to be sourced from abroad. So, I find myself wondering which parlour or community shop has been given the all-clear to stock and sell pharmaceuticals in this country? How the hell do you run out of a vital supply of the one drug available for treatment locally?<\/p>\n

I should add that I am a fortunate patient of this dreadful disease in that I have my children on whom I depend, and they do the necessary research to locate suppliers and pharmacies that carry the drug. At one time when my friend Mike Bazie was more active, he would go around looking for the drug whenever the local pharmacies in my area ran out. Sadly, not all patients are that fortunate.<\/p>\n

So, once again, my family and I are on the hunt for this vital drug. Calls to the supplier gave us the information that the drug was recently re-ordered and back in supply, but not yet at the pharmacies. And, at the pharmacies where the drug was available in short supply, it went from a manageable $275 to $400.<\/p>\n

At this point, some of you might be asking: but Shah, why are you buying what you could get for free in the Government\u2019s CDAP programme? Well, I\u2019ll tell you.<\/p>\n

To begin with, every time you drop in your form, you get a drug, but from a different supplier. That means more readjustment for your body and, in some cases, it just doesn\u2019t work. And, yes, I am angry at this point because, forgive my thinking, but how does one mess up the supply of vital drugs?<\/p>\n

Just about two weeks ago, we had and may still have a shortage of cancer treatment drugs\u2014one which, as I understand it, costs a hefty sum if you have to purchase it on the outside. The Government makes it available at their free cancer-patient treatment facility, and patients who cannot afford private care at one of the several private oncology centres have to resort to getting help from our public facilities.<\/p>\n

Last week, the Prime Minister spoke about the bureaucracy surrounding the introduction of new drugs into the public domain, and she lamented that technology has changed and so should our mindset. I agree.<\/p>\n

But while the PM and her colleagues, and those in Opposition wage war in the House, people are suffering. And, worse than that, people are giving up the fight to save their own lives because to live with the diagnosis is bad enough, but to be forced to wait on vital treatments, drugs and necessary scans is to die a slow and painful death.<\/p>\n

If, as the PM says, the technologies are available, why are we not moving faster? Why does it seem as though we are stuck in the mud, spinning tyres all the way? The present administration has been in power for one and a half years so far, with the same Minister of Health at the helm from the beginning.<\/p>\n

As a patient with some clout, I lash out when they add to my suffering by telling me: we have the solution, you know. Then they do nothing. And, when they eventually get around to changing the policies and procedures in place, they institute a new set of rules with a new set of hoops to jump through to get anything done. So, in essence, we\u2019re back to square one.<\/p>\n

Madam PM, first we have to find the money to purchase priority medicine, and now we have gone ten steps backwards: we have no medicine to purchase.<\/p>\n

Let us stop looking at past failures, and start looking at present shortcomings. All that has been delivered by this administration so far are vague but bold statements about possible solutions on just about every issue, while your people continue to suffer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Raffique Shah September 12, 2026 To hear the stories being told from four cardinal points of the globe we call our world is to listen to or to read\u2014or worse, experience\u2014the common global issue of pharmaceutical failures. I\u2019m not referring to failures in the sense of malpractice or drug side effects\u2014well, at least that\u2019s … Continue reading No medicine, no excuses<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169],"class_list":["post-56584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt","tag-raffique-shah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56585,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56584\/revisions\/56585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}