By the end of 2022, the price of medicines will have skyrocketed by 70%, warns UNIFACC

The price of antibiotics, drugs for chronic degenerative diseases, blood products, toxoids, and vaccines will increase by 70 percent by the end of the year, warned Oscar Zavala Martínez, president of the National Interdisciplinary Union of Pharmacies, Clinics, and Clinics (UNIFACC).

“From January to date, we have noticed a constant, permanent, and upward increase of between 5 percent and 7 percent per month, representing an increase of 70 percent from January to December 2022 at the end of the year.”, he tells Forbes Mexico.

The manager adds that the rise in prices is the product of greater demand for medicines in Mexico and the scarcity of supplies for their manufacture.

Unfortunately, patients are not immediately aware of the increase in prices because the increase in medications has been gradual, he says.

“Today it is expensive to get sick in Mexico, since we have realized as private doctors and pharmacists, that we have around 5,200 pharmacy establishments, how the patient complains about the loss of purchasing power,” says the drug distributor.

In 2021, a patient spent 45 percent of his monthly income on purchasing medicines, even if he had social security, adds Oscar Zavala Martínez.

“Due to the shortage of medicines in public institutions that are not giving them to patients or insured, now they are looking to the private initiative to buy their medical services and medicine,” says the UNIFACC leader.

According to Zavala Martínez, about 55 percent of the inputs required by the national pharmaceutical industry are imported, which represents just over 100 billion pesos a year in imports of pharmaceutical products and active ingredients, of which, The leading suppliers are the United States, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, India, and China.