HAVANA.- The Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industries Group, BioCubaFarma, guarantees 25 medicines to face the COVID-19, Rita Maria Garcia Almaguer, director of operations and technology of the Senior Organization of Business Management (OSDE by its Spanish acronym) stated.
The directive emphasized the extraordinary effort that this requires, since resources are imported and force to carry out many operations, particularly in logistics, after the situation existing by the closing of the border.
Despite this, we have ensured the more than twenty medicines with which we contribute to face this terrible pandemic, she remarked, after mentioning how they deliver all the homeopathic drops requested according to the gradually established levels, among them the PrevengHo-Vir, whose production does not present any difficulty, since there is the installed capacity to respond to whatever the National Health System requires.
The OSDE not only works in the search for new medicines, some of which are already being applied to raise immunity, but also in medical equipment, some of which are being manufactured and others are being repaired; clothing, masks and other supplies are also made.
Currently, 99 percent of the raw materials and materials for the required primary packaging are imported, e for example, aluminium foil, glass bottles, ampoules, bulbs, caps, seals, among others, for the different pharmaceutical forms.
Only the secondary containers are those that the mentioned industry has managed to have within the national production.
Garcia Almaguer mentioned the impact upon this industry of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba, which, in spite of having many suppliers, stopped selling to the country by associating with U.S. companies.
She pointed out the requirements in terms of the approval of a new supplier, a process that requires months to acquire samples, then to produce after assing through all the established physical-chemical tests, to carry out a stability analysis and other observances of the rigorous chain.