Q: What are the reasons for the increase in the price of Myanmar traditional medicines during the COVID period?
COVID was discovered in Myanmar in March 23, 2020. As part of the preventative measures, there have been restrictions on the movement of people and goods. This impacted the logistics operations in the distribution of Myanmar traditional medicines. In addition, the border crossing gate between Myanmar and India has been shut ‘temporarily’ till now, thereby restricting the free flow of the raw materials – herbs. If these herbs have to reach here through illegal border crossing, they are definitely going to be more expensive.
The next contributing factor is the exchange rate; with the $ appreciating so much against Kyats, the base cost of the herbs, priced in $, has too gone up. In addition, the packaging materials that we used for our products are also imported. So the prices of these are affected as well.
All the reasons above contributed to the increased prices of our traditional medicines.
Q: When do you think the prices will ever fall back?
Only when the exchange rate stops climbing, then the prices can become stabilised. If Kyat appreciate, the cost of the our raw and packaging materials would reduce accordingly.
Q: What types of herbal medicines are you producing during the COVID period?
Mine company ‘Five Otters Traditional Medicines’ originally produces eleven different types of traditional medicines. Nowadays with continued increase in the prices of raw materials, we are concentrating on the production of medicines for diabetes and hypertension. There are significant numbers of people suffering from diabetes or hypertension in Myanmar. Hence, we are producing mainly these at present. The production of the rest of the products have been halted.
Q: Are you selling your products to overseas too?
We do not have a formal channel for export. We do have consumers from overseas buying our products from here to consume over there. Almost all our production is for local consumption. People buy our products at distributors across the country.
Q: Are you thinking of producing a preventative medicine for COVID? Currently I have no plans for that. I am still finishing up some books that I started. I do treat some COVID patients, using traditional medicines that have cured diseases similar to COVID in the past. There are also traditional medicines that would cure COVID symptoms too. I have also heard of some traditional medicine doctors trying to experiment with the production of herbal and traditional cure for COVID.
