Context: In 2025, 54,257 children were born in Belarus, which is a record low in the history of observations. The country’s birth rate has fallen to 5.96 children per 1,000 residents. This is one of the lowest rates globally.
Against the backdrop of Belarus’s poor demographic record, the state TV channel reported on the closure of maternity wards and the crisis in Poland’s healthcare financing. Following a CTV report on the success of the domestic sowing campaign aired on May 4, 2026, Novosti 24 chasa host Viktoryia Markevich turned to the topic of the “dangerous shortage” allegedly facing a neighboring country.
“Poland is running out of many medicines. The Pharmaceutical Inspectorate has issued an alarming warning. The agency has revealed that the list of drugs at risk of shortage already includes around 300 items. Among them are medications for diabetes and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.”
Next, a video featuring the Chief Pharmaceutical Inspector of Poland was shown. In CTV’s translation and voice-over, the following quote was presented: “We have a monitoring system for medicinal products that enables us to track each product from the manufacturer to the pharmacy. This allows us to accurately evaluate the level of pharmaceutical security in the country. Our analyses show that the average stock of medicines in Poland exceeds four months, which is a high figure even by the standards of the pharmaceutical market economy.”
The presented interview with Poland’s Chief Pharmaceutical Inspector was actually published in October 2024. It did not address the current shortage of medicines, but rather the dangers of purchasing medication online. In the original clip, the official said:
“We generally understand how risky this practice is. Some of these medicines were tested and found not to contain even trace amounts of the substances they were supposed to contain.”
During the interview, the chief pharmaceutical inspector explained that drugs purchased online could be counterfeit. He also said, “Selling prescription drugs through online channels or stores is a criminal activity.”
The quote CTV superimposed on the old video does indeed belong to this Polish official. He said it in another interview in late April, and its meaning was the opposite of what the TV station implied. The Polish official said there are about 300 items on the list of scarce medicines, but there is no cause for alarm because the medicine supply will last for more than 4 months. For comparison, stocks of essential medicines in Belarus are sufficient for three months. In Belarus, however, this refers only to essential drugs, whereas in Poland it applies to the majority of medicines.
The list of medicines in short supply in Poland has been published approximately every two months for more than 10 years. It is an anti-export list, meaning the state controls the export of these drugs to prevent their resale abroad at higher prices. This restriction only applies to business entities. Individuals may carry up to five packs of medicine for personal use.
Moreover, the list was once much longer. For example, it had more than 380 drugs five years ago. The previous version contained around 270 items, and the current list has grown to 282. A drug’s mere presence on this list does not mean that it is in short supply. This is what the Polish official was referring to in the interview that CTV used as evidence of the shortage of medicine in Poland.
The drug market in Poland is much larger than in Belarus. There are more than 19,000 registered pharmaceutical products in Poland, whereas in Belarus, there are approximately five times fewer.