Drug shortage pushes patients to breaking point

Across the country, the underprivileged are hit hardest. Unable to afford private pharmacies, many are sent home with prescriptions they cannot fill, forced to watch their conditions worsen while they wait for stock that does not come.

In clinics from Gaborone to the remote settlements of Kgalagadi, it has become common for patients to move between facilities in search of medication. Only a few succeed. Others, after days of searching and spending scarce money on transport, simply give up. Nurses say they are left to explain the inexplicable, handing over referral notes instead of pills. “We feel helpless,” said one health worker in one of the Gaborone clinics. “You see a diabetic patient with dangerously high sugar, and you have no metformin. You tell them to try the next clinic,” she added.