Problems with the availability of certain drugs, including some antibiotics, result from, among others, from poor prediction of the demand for them by manufacturers, as well as the tendency to use drugs in off-label indications. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Health took a position on the shortages of some medications reported for several weeks, including by pharmacists.
The Ministry of Health speaks about the shortages of some drugs
Published Oct. 18, 2022 15:59
During a press conference, Deputy Minister of Health Maciej Miłkowski argued that the ministry and the pharmaceutical inspection were constantly monitoring the situation. He also announced that "soon" doctors will receive a tool to track the availability of drugs - they will be able to do it using the salon.gov.pl application.
- In Poland, we have over 16,000 registered. medicinal products and approx. 55 thousand packages. No pharmacy can have all medicinal products, but there is no problem with the systemic shortage of drugs, argued Maciej Miłkowski, responsible for drug policy in the ministry.
Monitoring the situation, according to Miłkowski, allows to conclude that problems with availability result from the issue of discontinuation of production, random causes, difficulties in transport or increased demand related to, for example, the infection season. A separate problem is the fashion for the use of selected drugs in non-funded indications. Recently, this mainly concerns anti-diabetic drugs, which are used to reduce body weight in patients.
The deputy minister also referred to the low availability of antibiotics, which had been raised for several weeks. He informed that there are now significantly more of them on the market, and the shortages recorded since September “resulted from the manufacturer's underestimation of the demand”. He also reminded about the activities of the ministry - anti-export lists (the latest one, which was published on Tuesday, included twelve new active substances and the list was extended to two hundred items), consent to intervention import, as well as establishing substitutes for deficit drugs in cooperation with provincial consultants.
