Drug shortages still a problem in Canada: Cdn pharmacists
Posted January 14, 2013 11:04 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Most doctors and pharmacists are reporting difficulty finding the prescription drugs their patients need, and it’s having an impact on people’s health.
“We expected the number to be higher, but up to about 20 per cent of patients — so, one in five patients — their health is somehow affected by drug shortages,” says Jeff Poston with the Canadian Pharmacists Association. “The fact that that number is not higher is really testimony to the work that physicians and pharmacists are doing in trying to make sure that patients get medication that works for them.”
“But of course, that’s a significant workload on physicians and pharmacists,” he adds, saying medical professionals are spending more and more of their time searching for alternative medications that won’t react to other prescriptions the patient might be taking.
Poston says the survey, done in the fall of 2012, is evidence of “an on-going problem.”
“We first had a survey that we did in the fall of 2010 that indicated that physicians and pharmacists in Canada were dealing with a significant number of drug shortages,” explains Poston.
He says reporting of drug shortages by the companies that manufacture medicine has improved in the last couple of years, but the underlying problems remain. He blames the issue on supply shortages affecting manufactorers globally, and issues like red tape and regulation in Canada.
“There’s not one single factor that seems to be the problem,” he tells us.
“As a group, we are just urging that all of the stakeholders continue to work together, continue to improve reporting on the problem, continue to find solutions to reduce the challenges that are inherent to making sure we do maintain continuity in our drug supply,” notes Poston.
BC Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid is not aware of any current drug shortages here.
“[However,] over the last number of months… there was a particular problem with analgesics. There was a company that was a main supplier of some medications and there were some problems, I think in a factory,” she tells us.
However, she says the situation has been corrected.
“It is something that’s being monitored very closely, not only in the province, but also by the federal government because there are some medications [for which] shortages can be a very serious problem,” adds MacDiarmid.
