Shortages are part of life practicing medicine in a resource limited setting. The last month we have experienced critical shortages of TB and HIV medications which are both supplied by the government. Both these illnesses require daily dosing of medications to achieve success and avoid development of resistant strains. We have no medications to start a new TB patient with. We are sending them home with instructions to return in 2 weeks with the hope that we will have medications then and hope they will not infect family and friends in the meantime.
Many of our HIV patients come from quite a distance to get their medications every 1-2 months. Due to the shortages we can now give them only 7 days of medication and most are receiving whatever combination of drugs we have that day as opposed to the 3 drugs that they had been taking. I hope that this situation will be rectified soon.
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