Press action medeor

The “World’s Emergency Pharmacy,” as action medeor is also known, is recording significant price increases, particularly for essential basic medicines needed in humanitarian aid. “This affects both the packaging of medicines and individual active ingredients,” reports Dr. Angela Zeithammer, Executive Board Member of action medeor. According to her, prices for PVC and aluminium films used for blister packaging have risen sharply. “In addition, manufacturers have announced substantial price increases for certain active ingredients. For example, the cost of paracetamol has risen by almost 40 per cent,” Zeithammer says.

Middle East conflict drives up medicine prices

At action medeor, the cause of these cost increases is seen in the ongoing Middle East conflict. “Rising gas and oil prices as a result of the war have led to a sharp increase in the cost of producing and transporting life‑saving medicines,” Zeithammer explains. This has direct consequences for people in poorer regions of the world. “Unlike in Germany, where rising prices may simply make medicines more expensive, price shocks in poorer countries immediately affect overall availability. Medicines then become unavailable for many people because no one can afford them,” Zeithammer warns.

According to action medeor, humanitarian settings react far more sensitively to such price shocks. “In countries with low per‑capita income, there are far fewer price buffers. Fluctuations in food or medicine prices therefore have a much stronger impact,” Zeithammer explains. Critical groups of medicines—such as antibiotics, diabetes and pain medication, and drugs used to treat malaria—are disproportionately affected.
“Plainly speaking, this means that when essential medicines become more expensive, more people die from diseases that would actually be easily treatable,” Zeithammer summarizes.

Problems in the Middle East are fading into the background

However, rising medicine costs are not the only challenge facing humanitarian aid workers. Higher oil and gas prices also have a severe impact in other areas, such as food costs.
“In countries that are highly dependent on imports, such as Afghanistan and Somalia, increased transport costs immediately affect food supplies,” Angela Zeithammer reports.
“Somalia, for example, has to import more than 90 per cent of its essential goods. The United Nations is already speaking of a doubling of transport costs for humanitarian deliveries to Somalia as a result of the Middle East conflict. As a consequence, we are seeing sharply rising food prices in local markets, further exacerbating the current hunger crisis caused by drought,” Zeithammer says.

Action medeor also sees another worrying effect. “Many of the crises mentioned, in which people struggle for survival every single day, are hardly visible to us in Germany. Conflicts such as those in Ukraine and the Middle East naturally command our attention - rightly so,” Angela Zeithammer explains. “But in doing so, we must not forget those people worldwide who are suffering silently.”