Issue No. 600
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22 - 28 August 2002 Issue No. 600 Home news |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
In with the new
Producing insulin locally was the Health Ministry's answer to the drug's shortage crisis. Can diabetics in Egypt trust the new product? Mona El-Nahhas investigates
During the past few months, insulin, a medication indispensable to diabetics, disappeared from pharmacies around the country. Patients, the majority with low incomes, had no choice but to resort to the black market, where the LE6 package was being sold for LE20.
Blame for the crisis was partly assigned to the Holding Company for Medications, which the public suspected of deliberately withholding the imported insulin in order to raise its price. With seven million diabetics in Egypt and an insulin shortage on his hands, Minister of Health Mohamed Awad Tageddin decided that manufacturing insulin locally may be a solution. The Vaccine and Inoculation Authority (VIA) was asked to manufacture the substance at its factory.
After the decision was announced, however, Health Ministry insiders leaked news to the press that the manufactured insulin will be extracted from animals, warning that this kind of insulin production was stopped all around the world because of its detrimental effects on humans.
The Health Ministry is handling the insulin shortage in a criminal way, said an article published in Al-Wafd, mouthpiece of the liberal Wafd Party, last month. The Ministry commissioned the VIA to manufacture the animal- insulin without conducting enough experiments, it added.
Insulin -- a natural hormone extracted from the pancreas -- controls the sugar level in the blood. In diabetic patients, the pancreas fails to produce the amount of insulin necessary to control the absorption of sugar by the body.
"We do not have the technical or financial capabilities in Egypt to manufacture human insulin," a senior Health Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. "It's very easy and cheap to make animal insulin, which is extracted from pigs' pancreas."
Tageddin denied all the accusations. On 26 July, he was quoted in the daily Al-Ahram as saying that what was published on the issue was false. Tageddin said these were all rumours propagated by the foreign companies exporting insulin to the Egyptian market.
The new insulin, he said, will be extracted from human cells and manufactured by means of genetic engineering. "The Egyptian product measures up to the world's highest standards. The product was also tested for effectiveness," he said.
According to Tageddin, besides covering market demand, the new insulin will help save $35 million annually, the price the country had to pay for its imported insulin.
Mahmoud Abul-Nasr, a physician and first under-secretary of the Health Ministry, said that starting next month, diabetic patients will be given their monthly needs of insulin at ministry- affiliated hospitals. He said the ministry has just concluded a national campaign to register patients at health departments across the country.
The locally-manufactured human insulin has already been produced, after bringing the know- how from pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the Far East, VIA Chairman Mohamed El- Abbadi said at a recent press conference. "Tests conducted on the new product proved its safety and effectiveness," El-Abbadi said.
Insulin will be the first medication to be produced by the VIA after it was transformed last month by a presidential decree into a holding company for biological products, vaccines and medications.
Sameh Abdel-Shaqqour, dean of the National Institute for Diabetes, who conducted the clinical tests on the new product, described it as being an unprecedented experiment in the field of biotechnology. Abdel-Shaqour believes the step is a first on the road to a radical solution of the insulin shortage problem. Asked about the animal type of insulin, Abdel-Shaqqour said: "It's not bad. Yet, in some patients, it may cause allergic reactions."
Diabetics are still worried, though. Magda Farouq, a 52-year-old diabetic, said she is apprehensive about the new insulin's side effects. "I hope that the current insulin we are used to will not be banned until the effectiveness of the new insulin is proven," she said.
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