Blockaded Indian state running low on medicines

GUWAHATI: India’s far-flung state of Manipur could soon face a shortage of life-saving drugs, a top government official said on Tuesday, as an unprecedented blockade over an anti-terror law entered its second day. Transporters kept off the highways leading to mountainous Manipur for fear of attacks by civil rights, students and women groups who have called a 16-day blockade to force the federal government to repeal the law which they say is being abused. “If they continue with the highway blockade, supplies of medicines and medical equipments, including life-saving drugs and oxygen cylinders will become a problem,” Chief Minister Ibobi Singh told Reuters. Landlocked Manipur has barely a week’s stock of emergency drugs, said a senior official at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, the main hospital in the state capital Imphal. reuters

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