Cheap medicine in particular is in short supply
Published: Tuesday, Jun 25th 2024, 10:10
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Since the coronavirus pandemic, the issue of drug shortages has been on everyone's lips. Even though the problem itself has been around for around 20 years, it has reached new heights with the outbreak of the global pandemic.
At times, almost 1000 medicines were missing in Switzerland alone. As a glance at the list shows, these are mainly simple and relatively inexpensive drugs.
As Christoph Metzler from healthcare logistics provider Galexis explains in an interview with AWP, the biggest bottlenecks are mainly found in medicines where the manufacturing price is less than ten francs.
"With the cheapest medicines, the manufacturer sometimes only gets 70 or 80 centimes per pack," says the expert. "At prices like that, it's extremely difficult to get any added value." After all, these centimes include everything: from the box to the package insert, the medicine itself and then - depending on the dosage form - the blister packs or ampoules.
If one of these drugs cannot be produced because an active ingredient or part of the packaging is not available, manufacturers in Western countries should not make any major efforts, but simply suspend production instead, the expert continued.
Production at such prices can really only take place somewhere in India or China, Metzler continues. However, this also makes production very vulnerable. If there is a shortage of any raw material, this immediately has far-reaching consequences.
"Today, we are dependent on so many individual suppliers when it comes to the supply and production of medicines - if something happens, a component of the products is simply missing and then it simply doesn't exist."
By contrast, the newer, more innovative drugs are less affected by the shortages. "Innovative preparations costing between 700 and 5,000 francs per treatment remain interesting for the industry," says Metzler.
A look at the list from the online portal Drugshortage confirms this. Generics manufacturers in particular top the list of companies with the largest number of open bottlenecks. This includes Sandoz, for example. As the site's data shows, there is currently a shortage for 123 of the total of 1148 registered products.
Antihypertensives, painkillers, antibiotics and antidepressants are the drugs most frequently affected by shortages.
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