Mexico’s president inaugurated a huge “super pharmacy” Friday in a bid to end the woes of patients throughout the country who are often told they need a specific medicine — but the hospital in question doesn’t have it.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s solution was to outfit a big warehouse on the outskirts of Mexico City to centralize a supply and send it to hospitals throughout the country.
…
The pharmacy is intended to complement local health facilities. If a patient can’t get needed medications at a local hospital, the patient, the patient’s doctor or the pharmacist would be able to call up the warehouse and get it delivered from the huge 40,000 square meter (430,000 square foot) Mexico City warehouse.
…
The question is whether Mexico can overcome its history of being bad at regulating the pharmaceutical industry, bad at buying medicines, bad at storing them, and bad at distributing them. Extreme centralization also hasn’t helped Mexico much in the past in many areas.
Good for them