Upon arrival he found an open-air facility. More than 90% of the roofs of warehouses, production areas and other premises had blown up, but its workers, the desire to recover and the sense of belonging never went away. About 20 days later, when we arrived at the place, these were the testimonies that received us.

The night-early morning from September 26 to 27 will be unforgettable for Jesús González Arronte, one of the two directors of UEB that La Conchita has, who shows us in photos the disaster on the roofs, windows and doors of the factory. “The next day we started the recovery and in less than 10 days we were already producing, although we still have things to restore, especially roofs.”

The manager highlighted the high sense of belonging of the workers, despite the fact that more than half of the workforce had damage to their homes. “We are helping many of them and we have even sold them coal, eggs and some resources,” he says, which is confirmed by Raidel Crespo, one of those most affected by Ian’s impact. “I didn’t think they were going to help people so quickly. That speaks very well of real solidarity.”
“No one was summoned here to deal with the destruction. More than 100 colleagues showed up. That showed the love of the workers for their center, because we know the economic importance we have for the province and the country”, says Aracelys Ajete, general secretary of the union bureau, with optimism.

“Thanks to that, several production lines are already working. With our own strength we erected new roofs, collected fallen trees and cleaned the areas”, explains the veteran trade unionist who treasures 33 years of work in La Conchita in her body and spirit. “I remember other natural phenomena like Gustav, but I had never experienced something like this. Ian was devastating, but we will get up. Even a group of us went to La Coloma to help”.

United in life, and in business!
Yunia Castro has been in this factory for 13 years and suffered damage to her home, and even so, she returned to her workplace knowing the importance of resuming production, since not only Pinar del Río benefits, but also Artemisa, Mayabeque, Havana and other provinces.

“This situation has been difficult. Working hard at home and at the workplace is complicated, but there is no other option but to push forward, ”she says. “Ian affected my roof, however, La Conchita is like my house, that’s why I joined. This is where my salary comes from, the sustenance of my children, ”she confessed.

Yunia highlighted the interest of some of her managers and colleagues in helping her solve her damage. “Here we are a big family, we help each other and that is worth a lot”, she certified while she with a couple of screams, due to the intense noise of the production, she called her husband.

“I’m Martínez Álvarez, Director of Maintenance,” she said, although we barely heard him over the whistling of the equipment. “I can’t move from here now. The cyclone hit the company hard, although thanks to everyone’s efforts we have come out ahead. We have set foot on the ground because we have to produce, it cannot be stopped”.

Another veteran in these parts is Julio César de la Vega. He is from Havana, but he fell in love with a Pinar del Rio woman and has been in La Conchita for 36 years, now as head of the laboratory. “Here there were doors that the hurricane took with the frame and everything. We prepare because we have a cyclone culture. For example, sugar is collected days in advance, many raw materials are packed in tanks with lids and even then they are covered with canvas.

“The equipment is intact. The technology is not very modern, but we take care of it. Vinegar, compote for children and vitanova are being produced in this same workshop”, she informs as if he were wasting time joining his work.

“The secret of quality is putting love into it and counting on the good technologists and teachers we have,” acknowledges Julio César, who could not escape the baseball controversy because he is a fervent industrialist.

Before leaving and after touring the almost complete factory, we return to the dialogue with González Arronte. “The production plans will not be affected, only that it will force us to work more in double shifts, and of course our recovery is vital, because we produce food for the population. And now more are needed.”
One final idea we take from this group. “The idea is that the factory will be better when we finish the recovery”, emphasizes Arronte. “We put the cultural detail of the installation,” says Aracelys Ajete. “Journalist, this factory is emblematic, nobody stops us,” concludes Raymand, one of the many Pinar del Rio residents who will never forget the night his son asked him to sit at the door so that Ian would not enter his house.

( By: Joel Garcia, Daniel Martinez Rodriguez/ from Workers)

Caffeine, the same stimulant that helps millions of people start their day, also saves lives in hospitals. If a premature baby is unable to breathe at birth, called primary apnea, caffeine citrate gets its immature lungs going. It is an old drug, well known and cheap to produce. But it has an important uncertainty: only two companies manufacture it and some presentations have only one alternative on the market. If there were to be a problem in the drug’s long supply chain, many newborns’ chances of surviving would be compromised.

The vials of 20 milligrams of caffeine citrate are one of the 508 medicines —made with 264 active ingredients— that the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS), dependent on the Ministry of Health, has included in a new list of strategic medicines for the health system, a category that seeks to shield the supply of drugs so that they are never lacking in hospitals and pharmacies. “They are essential drugs, but they have also been on the market for many years and whose price has been falling over time. This makes them less attractive for the pharmaceutical sector. In many cases there are only one or two manufacturers in the market, which makes them vulnerable”, explains the director of the agency, María Jesús Llamas.

Drug supply problems, more frequent in those cheaper presentations, have become entrenched in recent years throughout the world. A recent report from the AEMPS highlights that in the last year they have grown by 38% in Spain and affect one in every 30 presentations on the market. In the vast majority of cases, these difficulties have little impact on the patient, since there are several identical alternatives for the drugs involved. “But this does not always happen and sometimes the problem affects a drug with no alternatives on the market and we have serious difficulties administering it to the patient who needs it,” explains Olga Delgado, president of the Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy (SEFH) and head of this area in the Son Espases Hospital (Palma de Mallorca).

An example is mitomycin, a key drug in the fight against bladder cancer. Others are cytarabine (against some types of leukemia and lymphoma) and methotexate (an immunosuppressant also used against cancer and rheumatoid arthritis). “Several of the drugs to be protected are oncological, but there are almost all specialties, such as some presentations of hydrocortisone [anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant] and amiodarone, used against serious arrhythmias,” adds Olga Delgado.

Managing deficiencies in some specialties is not always easy. “It takes a lot of work and a lot of planning to buy the affected medicines abroad, where it is still available. It also forces us to restrict its use only to those patients for whom there is no other alternative and to look for others for those who do have it…”, illustrates this specialist.

If a drug is only produced by one company, the risk of a problem occurring in the production plant or during transport skyrockets, with serious consequences for the health of the patients who need it. But it can also give rise to bad practices, if a pharmaceutical company decides to take advantage of the de facto monopoly that it enjoys. This was what happened with Aspen Pharma in 2018, when the company maneuvered to multiply the price of five anticancer drugs, four of which have now been included in the AEMPS list.

As the Ministry of Health did not agree to pay up to 30 times more for any of them, Aspen Pharma left the Spanish market without supplies, forcing hospitals to buy drugs that were much more expensive. The conflict was not resolved until 2021, when the European Commission became involved in the case and its Competition authorities threatened the company with a multi-million dollar fine for abusing its dominant position. Finally, Aspen Pharma relented and agreed to lower the price of its drugs by 73%.

“A medicine that is not attractive to produce for the pharmaceutical sector is a problem for the health system,” summarizes Emili Esteve, the director of the technical department of the Farmaindustria employers’ association. “We must find a way to resolve this situation and the creation by the AEMPS of the list of strategic medicines is a step in the right direction. The objective is for more manufacturers to be interested and, to achieve this, protecting them from the erosion caused by the current reference price system (which limits price increases or drives them down to save on pharmaceutical bills) is essential”, he adds.

The AEMPS initiative is the culmination of years of effort, also in the international arena, to identify the most important medicines for health systems and find the formula to guarantee their supply. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been publishing a list of essential medicines for years and the European Commission has also developed its own strategy with member states “to make supply chains more resilient and stronger,” according to the agency. .

These policies also have a scientific and industrial component, with the aim of contributing to the consolidation of a strong and innovative European pharmaceutical sector. The Profarma Plan is the translation at the Spanish level promoted by the Ministry of Industry and in which those of Health and Science also participate.

“Spain has a very good manufacturing capacity, both for the synthesis of active ingredients and for finished medicines, and we hope that this will be a stimulus. The general objective of the plan, which provides for aid, is to collaborate so that it is more innovative and competitive and, in this case, it also includes incentives for more companies to commit to the production of strategic medicines”, explains María Jesús Lamas.

Diversion to other countries
A recurring complaint from the sector in recent years has been that Spain is one of the European countries with the lowest drug prices, which would be behind some cases of shortages, since distributors – pharmaceutical companies usually have production quotas fixed for each country—in some cases obtain higher profits by diverting them to countries where prices are higher.

The AEMPS, which admits the need to guarantee the economic viability of strategic drugs, describes these cases as anecdotal and cites its latest shortage report as an example, in which only 2.4% of the 1,105 presentations with problems explained the reason. alleged by the owner of the drug was the lack of “commercial interest”. 25.3% of incidents were due to “non-quality manufacturing issues”, 24.6% due to lack of “plant capacity”, 22% due to “increased demand” that was not able to be met. cover, 8% to problems in “the supply of active ingredients” and 7.5% were related to “quality” problems, among other reasons.

“The problem of the supply chain is global and as such we are facing it with our European and international partners. There are active ingredients that are only produced in one or two places in the world. A problem in that factory or in the means of transport that distributes them to the whole world affects all countries. That is why it is so important to review each of the links in the chain, to identify at which points there may be a vulnerability and to have specific measures for each of them: have contingency stocks, increase the number of suppliers, plan the maintenance of production plants and planning any shutdown, among many others”, concludes the director of the agency.

(Taken from Therapeutic Arsenal)