Shortages of Medicines: An Urgent Issue in Europe and the United States

Every day, the correspondents’ club describes how the same news story is illustrated in other countries.

The French government will make the individual distribution of certain antibiotics out of stock compulsory. The executive thus wants to avoid that after a treatment, half-eaten boxes are lying around in the cupboards when there is a shortage of them. France is not the only country facing shortages. Over the past ten years, alerts have multiplied in Europe and the United States.

European pharmaceutical legislation is more than 20 years old

The European Consumer Bureau published in 2022 a study carried out among associations in half a dozen countries on the continent. France has seen shortage alerts multiplied by 20, Spain by twelve in the space of just a decade. According to this study, depending on the country, between a fifth and half of patients found themselves facing a shortage. These are medicines considered essential or of major therapeutic interest. The causes are either logistical problems, high demand or even a shortage of active substance. The profit margin, very low for generic medicines, does not help to support the supply of European laboratories either. Today, there are even shortages of medicines as common as paracetamol.

The pandemic has highlighted the obsolescence of European pharmaceutical legislation which is more than 20 years old. The European Commission proposed a reform in April to help laboratories finance research. It proposed the marketing of generics by reducing general intellectual property by two years. The Commission also wants to provide more resources for research into new antibiotics to fight what it calls the hidden pandemic: antibiotic resistance. And then, above all, it wants to force pharmaceutical companies to protect themselves against shortages by establishing prevention plans and building up stocks on a list of essential medicines.

In the United States, 30% more shortage in two years

In the United States, drug shortages can last a year and a half on average, and some essential pharmaceutical products have even been in shortage for more than 10 years. It’s even worse in 2023, according to a report. The number of drugs affected, 309, has never been higher in a decade and is an increase of 30% in two years. Hospital pharmacists reported having to ration, delay or cancel treatments because of shortages. Cancer patients are most affected, but the United States also lacks antibiotics, heart medications and morphine.

Low margins on generics have pushed manufacturers to turn to lower labor and manufacturing costs abroad, which has created a dependence on these countries. Federal policies that aim to control the prices paid by Medicare and Medicaid health plans also significantly affect the supply chain’s ability to recover from a shortage. And if that wasn’t enough, a tornado damaged a very large Pfizer production and storage facility in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in July.

2023-09-21 16:43:39


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