Medicine shortages
"Not even amoxicillin for my child in stock. How can it be," it sounds with regularity in the pharmacy. The shortage of medicines in the Netherlands is huge. For example, there are times when 1053 different medicines are not available. Research shows that 5 million of the 13 million medicine users in the Netherlands experience the consequences. The shortage has a big impact and pharmacists find it unacceptable.
When do we talk about drug shortage?
There is a drug shortage when a particular drug is unavailable in the Netherlands and the drug is not expected to be available for more than 14 days.
What are the causes of this?
In the coming months we will explain the causes further. Roughly speaking, these are the problems we face in the Netherlands:
- The manufacturer does not want to make the drug anymore because the manufacturer does not earn enough 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 medicine because there is a shortage of raw materials in China and India.
- Health insurers' preference policies. As a result, only the cheapest drugs are reimbursed, while other, often only slightly more expensive drugs, are given 'is not reimbursed' status.
Hope?
Some initial agreements have been reached between health insurers and drug suppliers to work together to combat 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.
Look also at this article on our website and the KNMP's video.
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