Russia faces pharmacy crisis!

Russian people gag for drugs. Pharma imports are drastically reduced in Russia because of the “Swift” effect. Citizens also queued up at pharmacies for drugs in the Russian capital, Moscow. The result of the sanctions on Russia in the wake of the aggression on Ukraine. This is especially the case with Russian banks being exempted from the US 'Swift' money transfer system. More than a dozen iconic pharma companies have already announced their withdrawal from Russia. However, the supply of life-saving drugs and vaccines will continue until a final decision is made.

But, Swift's lack of payments to pharma companies has now become a major reason for the shortage of drugs in Russia. In addition, the suspension of cargo services by the iconic logistics company Maersk is having a severe impact on the supply of drugs. The American company that supplies drugs to Russia is Lily, the Swiss pharma giant is Novartis, and the French company is Sanofi. German companies trade in US dollars or euros. With the cancellation of Swift‌ services, payments for them could not be made which led to pharma supply being severely affected. It has now been revealed that there is a shortage of 80 types of drugs in Russia.

The United States of America, the UK, EU, and Canada jointly made a decision to remove selected Russian banks from the Swift messaging system on February 26^th. Swift is the method of providing secured financial message services for the execution of financial transactions. Swift sanctions made people fear Russia. They rushed to ATMs for rubles and dollars. As per the reports, people withdrew nearly one trillion rubles soon after US and EU announced sanctions on SWIFT.