The climate emergency is turning fragile supply chains into a crisis

Even before catastrophic floods hit Pakistan last year, antiretroviral medicines, or ARV, were in short supply for people in the country living with HIV. Some patients were traveling up to seven hours to receive care and pick up free medicines at government clinics. When the floods began in June, facilities already stretched by the COVID-19 pandemic started to run out of lifesaving medications altogether, said Anmol Mohan, a recent medical school graduate who began investigating after ARV shortages were reported during the pandemic.

“Patients didn’t have lifesaving medicines,” she said. “People had to travel, to take the whole day off and then the medicines weren’t there.”

The private market became the only source for such medicines, she said, but at prices that were out of reach of many patients. That left people in danger of developing resistance to the treatment and of falling dangerously ill.