Fighting cuts off insulin supply in Tigray

International Diabetic Federation decries reports ongoing war in Tigray has led to shortages of life-saving drug at Ayder referral hospital, Ethiopian region’s biggest hospital.

 

Doctors at the largest hospital in Tigray claim that there are only a few days' worth of insulin available, since the region's supplies have once again been cut off by fighting between rebels and Ethiopian government forces.

 

Doctors at Ayder Specialist Referral Hospital warn that they are already out of one type of the life-saving medication and have only a week's supply of another, a situation that the chairman of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) has called "a humanitarian crime."

 

 

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and federal troops engaged in a bloody conflict that earlier this year resulted in a cease-fire that allowed for the delivery of emergency supplies into the northern region, which up until that point had been suffering from what the UN described as a de-facto blockade.

Now, with fighting once again raging and both sides blaming the other for breaking the truce, humanitarian officials say they have been unable to get fresh supplies of either food or medicines into Tigray for a month. The region remains largely cut off from the rest of Ethiopia, without basic services such as electricity, communications, banking and transportations.

 

“What we had at the hospital we were distributing to the patients, but especially this week, patients are coming and we tell them we don’t have insulin medications,” said a senior doctor, who did not want to be named for security reasons. “They are coming from very far places. Transport is not easy … So when they reach here and we tell them there is no insulin, they are heartbroken. They cry.” The Guardian reports.

 

The surgeon expressed his concern that the situation at Ayder Hospital from the previous year, when supplies to Tigray were cut off for months, would occur again. We'll witness patients passing away and collapsing on the street, he predicted.

 

IDF President Andrew Boulton, a professor of medicine at the University of Manchester, urged Abiy Ahmed's administration to act quickly to ensure that Tigray could receive supplies such as insulin and other necessities.

 

“This is really a sort of humanitarian crime,” he said. “Even at times of war, there are agreements that essential medications should get through to the population. And this appears not to be occurring at the moment, in the best evidence that I have.”

 

Another doctor at Ayder hospital told The Guardian that doctors in Tigray generally used two types of insulin: fast-acting, or regular, insulin and an intermediate-acting insulin known as NPH.

 

“What we have is a very [small] amount of the regular; we reserved that to manage acute complications of diabetes,” the doctor said. “Otherwise, the main insulin preparation for the patient is the intermediate-acting, which mimics physiologic insulin. We don’t have that one. It’s almost more than a month since we have finished the insulin.”

 

People with type 1 diabetes require daily insulin to control their blood glucose levels. Without this, their condition can rapidly prove fatal.

 

Boulton has written to the Ethiopian health minister, Lia Tadesse Gebremedhin, urging her to end the “ongoing regulatory and security obstacles” that are “endangering the lives of the many thousands of people living with chronic and non-communicable conditions, including diabetes”.

 

Before the conflict started, more over 6,000 individuals were receiving treatment for type 1 diabetes in the area, with roughly 2,500 of them in Ayder.

 

The Guardian was given access to the letter in which Boulton implores the administration to "completely comply with international law and ensure the essential humanitarian access" in order to assist Tigray's most vulnerable citizens.

 

As in the 19th century [before to the discovery of insulin], the prognosis for those with type 1 diabetes in Tigray was "awful," he stated.

 

He told the Guardian, "I'm not politically interested [in the war] on either side." "However, as president of IDF, especially at this time - it has been 100 years since the first successful insulin injection was given in Toronto - our goal is that no one, anywhere in the world, should die because they cannot access the therapies they need."

 

The TPLF is to blame for making assistance delivery too risky, according to the government, which denies putting Tigray under embargo. In the past, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), which has transported all humanitarian aid into the area on behalf of the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, and other organizations, has also accused the rebels of stealing its fuel and for a long time refusing to return its aid trucks.

 

After the IDF and others expressed worries regarding pharmaceutical stocks, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was able to begin airlifting in some supplies of insulin and other pharmaceuticals with the help of the ministry of health in January.

 

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the ICRC said that all its flights and humanitarian convoys to Tigray had been suspended “until further notice” since the resumption of hostilities. WFP has not been able to lead a convoy into Tigray since 22 August.

 

Fighting erupted between the TPLF and government forces in late August. The TPLF said federal troops and their allies had launched a big offensive towards southern Tigray. The government, however, accused the TPLF of striking first.