A few have asked about Canada’s recent announcement they are restricting the export of certain medicines.

So here are my thoughts.

This isn’t news but we are in the middle of a pandemic.

It's not surprising countries like Canada want to protect their medical and pharmaceutical supplies.

Export restrictions in times of market anomalies for medicine make sense.

Thankfully, insulins available on http://Banting.co  are not on the restricted list for reasons worth its own tweet string.

More on this next time.

So let's focus on Canada and the export restriction list for medicines.

As a market smaller than California, restricting the export of critical medicines during the pandemic makes a lot of sense.

Canada is rightfully trying to prioritize its residents first.

Canada's medicine export list is a function of (a) the tier of the importance of medicine and (b) the current supply relative to demand.

This is why the list includes Remdesivir and Dexamethasone - both are used to treat patients with COVID-19.

The sudden increase in demand caused by the surge means there hasn't been time to manufacture more (constrained supply) while the demand is through the roof.

What you can't see in the Canada shortage list is that many meds have a single supplier or a mini-cartel of suppliers.

Supply is literally something they manufacture. While it's expected for shortages to occur, pharmaceutical companies also control when + where shortages exist.

Canada has a single-payer system so "where" the shortage exists is simply all of Canada and its residents rather than one city, one hospital, one patient. This bolsters their negotiation power.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., as we've seen that when + where medicine and treatment are given is not equally distributed to its residents as in Canada.

At Banting, we hope to change the distribution of medicine to not just those who can pay the most or have the most power.

We hope to make insulin available to everyone in the US no matter how much you can pay or how much influence you have.

Why? #insulinbelongstotheworld

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