Key drugs out of stock, pharmacists warn

PHARMACISTS have warned that a number of key medicines, including drugs to treat cancer, are either out of stock or in short supply in Ireland.

The Irish Pharmaceutical Union (IPU) said pharmacists had little or no warning that the products were going to be out of stock.

Some of the drugs that are currently unavailable include:

Methotrexate and Prostap: used in the treatment of cancer.

Ovranette and Minulet: oral contraceptives.

Oestrogel and Prempak C: used in the treatment of menopausal symptoms.

Velosef: used in the treatment of infections of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts.

Many more products currently in short supply and pharmacists have no idea when stocks will be replenished.

IPU president Dr Karl Hilton claimed that from time to time drug manufacturers deliberately avoided selling medicines in Ireland because they believed they could achieve higher returns elsewhere or they unilaterally decided to discontinue specific product lines.

“The Department of Health and Children needs to become much more proactive in ensuring that patients in this country have continuity of supply of these medicines and should ensure that these shortages do not occur again,” he said.

Dr Hilton said it could be extremely inconvenient and pose a health risk to patients to have to return to a doctor to have a new prescription written.

“If pharmacies received sufficient notice that a product was going into short supply, alternative medication could be discussed with the doctor in advance,” Dr Hilton added.

Asked if there were alternative medicines to the ones currently unavailable, Dr Hilton said that in some cases there were none available.

“There is absolutely no continuity of supplies. Drugs just go missing. You telephone the pharmaceutical companies and are told it is this problem or that problem, that it will be available next week or they will give you no date as to when it will be available,” he explained.

The supply problem has been ongoing but the IPU decided to highlight the issue now because there appeared to be such a huge number of drugs currently unavailable.