Bahrain has allocated about BD25 million ($66 million) within government budget for medicines for 2011-2012.

The Health Ministry possess more than 1,300 types of medicines to treat all diseases and there is no shortages of drugs for rare diseases, the minister, Dr Faisal Al Hamer, said yesterday.

He said non-availability of some medicines in the local market was due to delays in deliveries from abroad.

The ministry is keen on obtaining quality medicines and following up on proper storage, he was quoted as saying in our sister paper Akhbar Al Khaleej.-TradeArabia News Service