75 years on his shoulders and a battle that is not only fought with the disease. Since 2019, an elderly man from Tirana has been living with the diagnosis of "Pituitary Adenoma", a benign tumor in the gland that controls the brain's hormones. But for more than two years, his anxiety is not only related to health, but to a daily question: will he be able to find the medicine that keeps him alive?
The 75-year-old says that the medication "Dostinex", which he must take every two days, is no longer available in Albanian pharmacies. In many cases, he is forced to find it informally, through smuggling, where neither quality nor continuity is guaranteed. There are days when the medicine is completely missing and waiting turns into fear.
"I'm not well without it. But I can't find it anywhere," he says, explaining that each tablet costs about 400 lek, a heavy burden for a pensioner who struggles with the disease every day.
Even local pharmacies admit that they have not been supplied with this medication for years. In silence, patients like him remain forced to seek solutions outside the system, in an informal market where hope for treatment depends on chance rather than healthcare.
