The Covid-19 pandemic has directed our collective focus on all things medical. In the process we have been compelled to confront the good, the bad and the ugly of our health system. One of the first negative impacts of the pandemic, even before it arrived in our country, was the strained medical supplies situation that started to evolve, affecting availability of many life-saving medicines. This revealed our over-dependence on pharmaceutical and medical device imports. This shortage was experienced globally at the start of the pandemic, to a large extent because its epicentre at the time was Hubei Province, China, a global hub for pharmaceutical raw materials, then under locked down.