The whirring machinery at Parsva Pharmaceutical’s Herat facility fills 30,000 IV solution bags daily – enough to cover one-fifth of Afghanistan’s desperate need for sterile fluids.
Factory manager Mohammad Reza Alami, his lab coat sleeves rolled up to reveal chemical burns from years of hands-on work, proudly showed Bakhtar reporters the production line where workers in hairnets mix saline solutions under ultraviolet lights.
“We’ve invested $1.25 million of our family’s savings into these autoclaves and testing equipment,” said Alami, wiping sweat from his forehead near the blister-packaging machine. The factory currently produces 30 essential medicines, from antibiotics to antacids, with plans to launch ten more formulations by Eid. In the quality control lab, technicians were seen rejecting a batch of painkillers for minor coating imperfections – a rigor Alami claims distinguishes them from fly-by-night operators.
At Herat’s central drug bazaar, pharmacist Omid Noori gestured to shelves once empty but now stocked with local products. “Before, we relied on smuggled Iranian medicines that sometimes turned out to be chalk powder. Now.” He shook a Parsva-produced antibiotic bottle like a maraca, its pills rattling reassuringly.
