A woman walks past a fruit and vegetables stall selling medicines at a market in Rubio, Venezuela December 5, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez
Reuters: Venezuela's chronic shortages give rise to 'medical flea markets'
SAN CRISTOBAL/MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela's critical medicine shortage has spurred "medical flea markets," where peddlers offer everything from antibiotics to contraceptives laid out among the traditional fruits and vegetables.
The crisis-wrought Latin American nation is heaving under worsening scarcity of drugs, as well as basic foods, due to tanking national production and strict currency controls that crimp imports.
The local pharmaceutical association estimates at any given time, there is a shortage of around 85 percent of drugs.
Sick Venezuelans often scour pharmacies and send pleas on social media to find treatment. Increasingly, however, they are turning to a flourishing black market offering medicines surreptitiously bought from Venezuelan hospitals or smuggled in from neighboring Colombia.
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WNU Editor: This reminds me of the Soviet Union before it collapsed. When I was working overseas my family and friends were always asking me if I could ship them antibiotics, insulin, etc.. Especially after the disaster at Chernobyl. And even though I told them that these drugs required a doctor's prescription .... these pleas just grew with time. In the end I was lucky, a pharmacy chain helped me in exporting these drugs to the Soviet Union via through the church and charities.
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