“Extraordinary situation”: Hundreds of medicines are not available

According to the Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG), more than 540 medicines are currently unavailable or only available to a limited extent. Medical Association Vice President Harald Mayer criticized the dependency in manufacturing on Asia in the Ö1 morning journal. Andreas Windischbauer, President of the Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers (Phago), referred to an “extraordinary situation” and a “crisis camp” was necessary.

“We need a crisis camp for very important medicines because problems can always arise in global supply chains. That’s a fact and we have to be much more self-sufficient, especially with those that are not interchangeable,” said Windischbauer. A lot can only happen at European level, but in this area Austria itself must create a reserve.

Poorer availability of antibiotics

“After two very weak years with very low levels of infection, we now have a very high level of infection for a normal year,” he continued. This is particularly noticeable in the poorer availability of antibiotics. “And unfortunately we see everywhere that the global supply chains have also come under severe pressure as a result of the pandemic.”

“For cost reasons, most drug manufacturers no longer produce in Europe, but almost exclusively in Asia, especially in China and India. Often an active ingredient is only produced at one or two locations worldwide. The same applies to storage, which is increasingly at a few locations of the manufacturers abroad and no longer in Austria or other EU countries”, the bottleneck problem is described in a statement by the Chamber of Pharmacists.

“Have learned nothing from the pandemic”

“Unfortunately, one has to say to God that we haven’t learned anything from the two and a half years of the pandemic,” said Mayer on ORF radio. “We saw at the beginning of the pandemic that we were having problems with the procurement of medicines, production and medical products. At that time there was the wonderful idea that the EU should try to become self-sufficient. Nothing has happened in the last two and a half years.” It is only trying to optimize profits and overlooks the fact that you need a certain autonomy in vital things.

“We are still dependent on raw materials from various third countries and we have not managed to establish or attempt to establish a reasonable EU-wide supply of medical devices, or, if I prefer, together with the United States, Great Britain, etc.,” criticized Mayer . The incidence of infection was “not at all comparable to the last two years” and was particularly high for a normal year like before the pandemic, Windischbauer said. “There is also a problem with the active ingredients, we recognized that in September and this combination has now become really crass.” More than 1,000 very common medicines are currently not available, “but there are many of them where there are enough substitutes”.

“Are dependent”

It is necessary “to increase stocks not only in Europe, but also in Austria”. But you also have to be able to buy these products, “and we are currently dependent on the quotas that we are allocated in Austria”. Bringing production to Europe “is a long-term process”. In addition, the most common drugs in particular have extremely low prices – “70 percent of the drugs are less than six euros”. At this level, “manufacturing in Europe is not possible,” stressed Windischbauer.

A large number of drugs had also been reported to the BASG as unavailable in recent years: in 2020 there were almost 1,102 in total, almost 800 in 2021 and almost 1,260 in 2022, according to the Ö1 morning journal.