Drug shortages and the causes
"Not even amoxicillin for my child in stock. How does it exist," it sounds in pharmacies right now. The shortage of medicines in the Netherlands in 2023 was greater than ever. In the first week of this month, 1,053 different drugs were unavailable. Research shows that 5 million of the 13 million medicine users in the Netherlands have been affected. The shortage has a major impact and pharmacists now find it unacceptable that this situation continues.
When do we talk about a medicine shortage?
There is a medicine shortage if a certain medicine is not available in the Netherlands and the medicine is expected to be unavailable for more than 14 days.
What are the causes of this?
In the coming months we will further explain the causes. Roughly these are the problems we face in the Netherlands:
- The manufacturer no longer wants to make the drug because the manufacturer does not earn enough from it in the Netherlands due to the low drug prices in our country. The Netherlands is among the top three countries with the lowest drug prices Europe.
- The manufacturer cannot make enough drugs because there is a shortage of raw materials in China and India.
- The health insurers' preference policy. As a result, only the cheapest medicines are reimbursed, while other, often only slightly more expensive medicines, are given 'is not reimbursed' status.
Hope?
A few initial agreements have been made between health insurers and medicine suppliers to work together to combat the shortages. At least there will be "some" adjustments to insurers' preference policies. The question is whether this will solve the problems in the short term. Pharmacists themselves have also presented plans that could largely solve the problem. To date, however, these have not yet been embraced.
On February 8, these Parliamentary questions were answered.
We'll keep you informed!
Look also at this article on our website and the KNMP's video.