By Tony Yayo
Members of the Sierra Leone Pharmaceutical Business Association have called on the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Sierra Leone to help them with some bailout fund, as the preventive measures put in place by the government to maintain a zero status COVID 19 outbreak has had some negative impact on their businesses.
The call was made by the Secretary General of the Sierra Leone Pharmaceutical Business Association, Ibrahim Jalloh, otherwise known as AKJ, following the recent announcement by the Bank of Sierra Leone and the Ministry of Finance of a five hundred bailout fund for small and medium scale enterprises. He revealed to this press that before the advent of the COVID 19 outbreak they were having good sales, but that trend began to drop recently following the hard preventive measures put in place by the government.
According to him, sales of pharmaceutical products, across the country, have dropped by twenty percent, adding that the pharmaceutical sector alone employs over three thousand workers across the country.
He continued that, if the government fails to intervene and help them, the nation will start experiencing shortage of pharmaceutical drugs in the country within the next three months.
Ibrahim Jalloh also said that the shortage is due to the border closures, adding that the shortage will be very serious as there are other diseases in the country that will need medical and pharmaceutical attentions.
Furthermore, the Sierra Leone Pharmaceutical Business Association has come forward to join the government in the fight to prevent the outbreak of the COVID 19 in the country by banning first aid or other treatments at all pharmacies premises nationwide.
According to the Secretary General, they decided to join the fight because they are one of the core most frontliners in the medical sector, adding that the premises of pharmacies are the first point of call for many local people when they get sick.
He also noted that the Association has advised all pharmaceutical business people to follow the preventive measures put in place by the government, by placing veronica buckets at the front of their business premises and that people should ensure that they wash their hands before entering the premises.