BISHKEK: Like many people affected by serious illness in ex-Soviet Central Asia, Almagul Ibrayeva is having trouble finding medicine in her native Kyrgyzstan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen are dying because of a lack of medicine,\u201d Ibrayeva, who is in her 50s, told AFP.<\/p>\n
In remission from breast cancer, Ibrayeva needs a hormone treatment called exemestane after having a mastectomy and her reproductive organs were removed.<\/p>\n
She said she \u201coften\u201d faces difficulties.<\/p>\n
\u201cI order it from Turkiye or Moscow, where my daughter lives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many medicines that are simply unavailable here. The patient has to look themselves and buy them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shortages, high prices and the poor quality of medicine affect many of the region\u2019s 80 million inhabitants.<\/p>\n
The five Central Asian countries are highly dependent on pharmaceutical imports and patients are often left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n
There are often cases of expired or adulterated medicine such as the cough syrup imported from India which killed 69 children in Uzbekistan in 2023.<\/p>\n
The costs of high-quality medicine are often prohibitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people sell their homes, their livestock, get into debt just to survive,\u201d said Shairbu Saguynbayeva, a uterine cancer survivor.<\/p>\n
She created a center called \u201cTogether to Live\u201d in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek which hosts women who have cancer, offering accommodation and help for treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere they can get organized. When someone is receiving chemotherapy, they fall ill, not every loved one can handle it,\u201d Saguynbayeva said.<\/p>\n
Women at the center sew and sell traditional Kyrgyz ornaments \u2014 funding the treatment of 37 patients since 2019.<\/p>\n
Saguynbayeva says she is grateful to the Kyrgyz state for \u201cfinally\u201d starting to supply more medicine but says the quantity is still \u201cmeagre.\u201d<\/p>\n
One patient, Barakhat Saguyndykova, told AFP that she received \u201cfree anti-cancer medicine only three times between 2018 and 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the National Oncology and Haematology Center, doctor Ulanbek Turgunbaev said that sourcing medicine was \u201ca very serious problem for patients\u201d even though medicine supply has increased.<\/p>\n
He said the best way of reducing therapy costs was \u201cearly detection\u201d of serious illnesses.<\/p>\n
Material deficits and a shortage of 5,000 health professionals in Kyrgyzstan mean that the most urgent needs have to be addressed first.<\/p>\n
President Sadyr Japarov has promised to eliminate corruption in the medical sector, which cost the health minister his job last winter.<\/p>\n
While medicine factories have finally been opened, the situation in the short term remains complicated.<\/p>\n
The Kyrgyz Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that \u201caround 6,000 medicines could disappear from the market by 2026\u201d because of the need to \u201cre-register under the norms of the Eurasian Economic Union\u201d \u2014 a gathering of former Soviet republics including Kyrgyzstan.<\/p>\n
The government in 2023 created a state company called Kyrgyz Pharmacy which is supposed to centralize medicine requests and bring down prices, according to its head, Talant Sultanov.<\/p>\n
But the organization has been under pressure because of a lack of results.<\/p>\n
Sultanov said he hoped medicine prices could be lowered \u201cby signing more long-term agreements with suppliers through purchases grouped on a regional basis\u201d with other Central Asian countries.<\/p>\n
Kyrgyz Pharmacy has promised steady supplies soon but many women in Bishkek are still waiting for medicine ordered through the company months ago.<\/p>\n
Recently a mother of three \u201cdied simply because she did not receive her medicine in time,\u201d Saguynbayeva said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is better to save a mother than to build orphanages,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BISHKEK: Like many people affected by serious illness in ex-Soviet Central Asia, Almagul Ibrayeva is having trouble finding medicine in her native Kyrgyzstan. \u201cWomen are dying because of a lack of medicine,\u201d Ibrayeva, who is in her 50s, told AFP. In remission from breast cancer, Ibrayeva needs a hormone treatment called exemestane after having a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84553,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84551\/revisions\/84553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}