NOS/Jeroen van Eijndhoven
NOS News•
Pharmacy organization KNMP registered 1514 medicine shortages last year, mainly due to problems with the production and distribution of medicines. According to the trade association, it has never happened so often that a medicine was unavailable in the Netherlands for more than two weeks. Among other things, there was a shortage of tablets used for ADHD and medicines against gout attacks.
According to KNMP, the shortages could be compensated in almost three-quarters of the cases by using medicines with the same active ingredient. More than half of the shortages were resolved within ten weeks.
KNMP chairman Aris Prins nevertheless speaks of a frightening increase in medicine shortages. In 2021, there were still 1007 types of medicines that were not available enough. The scarcity was greater in 2019 and 2020: then there was a shortage of almost 1500 types of medicine. In the years before that, the shortages in absolute numbers were much lower, although the scarcity increased slightly every year.
Since January 1, traders and wholesalers of medicines have been obliged to build up a so-called ‘iron stock’, which can bridge any shortages for at least six weeks. According to Prins, this is hopeful, provided everyone adheres to the new measure. “This is absolutely necessary, because patients, pharmacists and other healthcare providers experience an extraordinary amount of trouble every day.”
Because the ‘iron stock’ rule has only just come into effect, it will not be actively monitored this year. The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ), which is responsible for enforcement, sees 2023 as a transition year in this regard.
Vulnerable system
The question is also whether the mandatory stock can solve the medicine shortages. Hans Waals, director of the Dutch medicine factory Tiofarma, spoke earlier today to the NOS of “symptom control”.
According to him, the measure cannot remove vulnerabilities in the medicine system, such as the development that the Netherlands is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign medicines for medicines. Decades ago there were dozens of drug factories in the Netherlands, but now there are only about twenty.
None of those factories produces exclusively for the Dutch market. After this weekend, Innogenetics, the last drug factory in the Netherlands that did, will close its doors. The company recently went bankrupt.
