Official reports have said that 60% of medications offered in Yemen are smuggled and the Yemeni people spend about $117 million on medications a year, according to the Algomohoriah newspaper.

Yemen imports medications from 117 foreign countries for $5.517 million a year, the reports said, adding that the private sector imports total $101 million a year.

Yemen has only seven medication factories but their capacities can't cover the local market needs, said the reports prepared by the ministry for public health and population.
Also, studies and researches confirmed hundreds of kinds of medications enter Yemen illegally coming from Arab and foreign countries.

The state high medication authority has recently discovered 45 kinds of medications as fake; all have entered the country in an illegal way through smuggling.

The origins of 26 kinds of those fake medications could not be identified and many other kinds are smuggled because of the high prices of the true or original medications, the authority said.

In the meantime, Yemeni pharmacies continue to hire uneducated and unskilled people to sell medications, a matter which experts said requires the authorities to take immediate strict measures to prevent exposing the lives of the patients to dangers.