'Cancer does not wait': Children's medicine shortage stokes anger in Mexico

For his mother, Esperanza Paz, the ordeal is compounded by fears of another round of shortages in the supply of the life-saving vincristine drug needed to treat the soft-tissue cancer in her son’s forearm.

“He can relapse. The cancer can come back,” said Paz, after a vital round of chemotherapy was delayed by a week in mid-January due to vincristine shortages in his Mexico City hospital.

“The concern is that Hermes is now in the final stage of his treatment. We only need two cycles of chemotherapy to finish,” added Paz, a crafts-maker who lives with her three small children in a modest home in the capital.

Hermes, who has undergone three surgeries since October 2018, is one of dozens of children whose cancer treatment has been imperilled by shortages following a procurement shake-up by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s government, which centralized drug purchases to reduce corruption and overpricing.

Read the full article here.