73 countries in different continents face an ARV stock outage as the COVID-19 pandemic grounds many operations worldwide, Health Times reports. According to the publication, 24 of those countries have already reported that their stocks were either critically low or they were having problems restocking the life-saving drug.
Speaking about the report which he called deeply concerning, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who said:
Countries and their development partners must do all they can to ensure that people who need HIV treatment continue to access it. We cannot let the COVID-19 pandemic undo the hard-won gains in the global response to this disease.
The looming predicament is reportedly caused by suppliers’ failure to ship out the drugs on time and a shut-down of land and air transport services, coupled with limited access to health services within countries as a result of the pandemic, according to the publication.
More: Health Times