Austria go out of medicines – says expert – Austria-News
Medicines are becoming increasingly scarce in local pharmacies, many things are no longer in stock. Now the President of the Chamber of Pharmacists takes a position.
For weeks, medicines in local pharmacies have seemed extremely scarce, if at all. The delivery bottlenecks are affecting almost all medicines, but antibiotics, blood pressure medicines and painkillers in particular have been affected for weeks. And not only do many Austrians no longer get the medicines in the pharmacies, but there is also guesswork as to whether and when they can be reordered at all. At the same time, in addition to Corona, the flu is picking up speed again, there are said to be over 360,000 flu cases in the country.
Read more: Virus wave overruns Austria – experts sound the alarm
Is Austria facing a drug catastrophe? The President of the Austrian Chamber of Pharmacists, Ulrike Mursch-Edlmayr, commented on this late on Wednesday evening in the “ZIB2” with ORF moderator Armin Wolf. Yes, there is currently a “noticeable rush” to pharmacies and a “serious problem” in the area of delivery passes, according to Mursch-Edlmayr, but the situation is no worse than in previous years if you look at the number of drugs affected , so the pharmacist expert in the ORF interview.
Read more: Bottlenecks – up to 600 medicines no longer available
But why is the situation so dramatic? Possibly because the corona pandemic is currently encountering an influenza wave and other viral diseases for which similar drugs are in demand, according to the expert. And: The drugs reported as being in short supply are “a current snapshot”, which may make the impression appear more dramatic than it is. According to Mursch-Edlmayr, patients can be well financed “up to 95 percent”, for example with alternative products. A task force is also working to fix the problems.
What does it take in the medium and long term to prevent such supply bottlenecks? Drug production and storage in Europe, according to the expert. In the past, as is well known, not only had the number of drug manufacturers drastically decreased, but production had also increasingly been outsourced to Asia. At least there is good news in this country: So far, however, no cases have become known of patients being harmed due to drug supply bottlenecks.