According to Health Canada, drug shortages will continue to be reported throughout 2023, and last year Canadians trying to obtain critical medicines were unable to get their prescriptions filled, thanks to an increase in reported drug shortages. may have felt that it had become more difficult.
While this spike indicates an increase in the number and duration of stockouts compared to 2020 and 2021, data provided by Canada shows that in reality, Canada began reporting This is a return to a trend dating back to at least 2017. Health Canada Visit CTVNews.ca.
Jen Belcher, a pharmacist and chair of strategic initiatives for the Ontario Pharmacists Association, knows this trend all too well.
“The overall drug shortages over the past five to 10 years have been extremely severe, in amounts and severity that we’ve never seen before,” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “We’ve had everything from aches and fevers for children in the past year, to cold and flu remedies, to antibiotics, and actually to medications that are important for cardiovascular events, like nitroglycerin spray.”
So far this year, Health Canada has received 2,452 shortage reports, which equates to 1,673 unique over-the-counter prescription medicines. A drug is considered to be in “shortage” when its supply does not meet demand. Over-the-counter medicines are medicines that are sold in Canada. This is because not all drugs approved in Canada are actually on the market in Canada. Additionally, unique missing reports are those that remain after duplicate reports are removed from the total.
“Since mandatory reporting laws went into effect in March 2017, an average of 2,556 over-the-counter prescription drug shortages have been reported each year, compared to an average of 1,840 proprietary drug shortages annually since 2017. The agency said in an email to CTV News.about
From 2017 to 2019, the number of new shortages reported each year remained stable, with an average of 230 reported per month. But by 2019, these shortages began to last longer than before. Then in 2020 and 2021, something changed.
The average number of new shortages per month decreased to 187, and the duration of shortages also shortened. Public health experts say that during this period, most Canadians began practicing physical distancing and wearing masks in public, both of which helped prevent the spread of common infectious diseases. They theorize that cases of infectious diseases other than COVID-19 have decreased.
In 2022, public health departments across the country saw a resurgence of certain bacterial and viral infections as pandemic-related restrictions eased. At the same time, Health Canada said the number of reported drug shortages rose to an average of 222 a month, nearly returning to pre-pandemic levels.
“Last year, both the duration of shortages and the average monthly number of new shortages increased,” the agency told CTVNews.ca. “So far in 2023, trends in number of reports and duration of shortages are similar to last year.”
The agency lists manufacturing disruptions, increased demand, shipping delays, active ingredient shortages, and a general “other” as the top five causes of current shortages.
In terms of duration, the cause of longest-lasting stockouts in 2023 will be shipping delays, followed by “other” Good Manufacturing Practice compliance requirements, inert ingredient shortages, increased demand, manufacturing disruptions, and active ingredient shortages. in the process of.
medicine is in short supply
Fortunately for Canadians, Health Canada noted that the majority of reported drug shortages ultimately have no patient-level impact.
Dr. Barry Power, Chief Pharmacy Officer of the Canadian Pharmacists Association, acknowledged this in an interview with CTVNews.ca.
“At any given time, there are about 1,500 critical shortages, many of which never reach the pharmacy level,” Power told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
“Manufacturers are responsible for reporting stock shortages and potential stock shortages (DrugShortagesCanada.ca). Therefore, the problem may be resolved before the inventory in the supply chain runs out. ”
But when drug shortages persist long enough to impact consumers, the consequences range from devastating to disastrous.
The patient made his rounds at the pharmacy and left.
Lori McConnell, 68, is managing her type 2 diabetes with Ozempic – or at least that’s what she’s trying to do.
She had been on the medication for 13 weeks, but in mid-November she was first told by the pharmacy team that her prescription could not be filled. Supplies have dried up amid a months-long nationwide shortage of the drug.
“People are being prescribed this and they can’t get it and their pharmacies and doctors are telling them to call pharmacies all over the place to find it,” she told CTVNews.ca in a Nov. 15 phone interview. told.
McConnell switched from her previous prescription drug, metformin, to Ozempic in August in hopes of managing her diabetes and reducing her risk of heart attack and stroke.
She suffered from the drug’s side effects, nausea, vomiting, and constipation, for about three months while her body got used to it. As those symptoms began to subside, she noticed how unreliable her medication supply had become.
Ozempic is administered by weekly subcutaneous injection, and while some pharmacists say they allocate their inventory by dispensing four doses at a time, McConnell is currently dispensing the next dose at multiple local locations each week. I’m asking the pharmacy. At one point this month, she was three days late on her medication.
“Most stores will only give you one pen at a time, even if they have one. My prescription includes five refills, so it’s really tough,” she said.
“But I’m going to get another dose…and I’m having a hard time getting the next dose. And they’re not going to recover or come out in large numbers until January. I say yes.”
McConnell said that even if he were forced to stop taking Ozempic and go back to his old regimen, he would not start taking it again once the shortage is resolved. She’s not going to risk enduring Ozempic’s first side effects a second time.
“Maximum potential impact”
In addition to shortages of medicines like Ozempic, there were also shortages of 30 Tier 3 medicines as of late November. These are the shortages that are likely to have the greatest impact on Canada’s drug supply and health care system, and currently include the following medicines: Nitroglycerin For cardiac events, antibiotics, blood thinners, and at least one chemotherapy drug.
Other drugs currently on the list include ketamine, calcitonin, which is used to treat osteoporosis, a drug to treat severe hypoglycemia, and the birth control pill Depo-Provera. eye drops and the anti-inflammatory steroid and seizure drug vigabatrin.
This line chart provided to CTVNews.ca by Health Canada shows the number of Tier 3 medicines in short supply across Canada at the same time, month by month, from March 2020 to May 2023. (Health Canada)Saw it last year 34 Tier 3 deficiency; According to Health Canada.
Belcher said Tier 3 shortages are causing so much disruption to patients and the health care system because these drugs are used for “a very specific purpose and there are few alternative treatments.” He said that there is.
For these reasons, Health Canada is working to prevent shortages where possible and to mitigate the impact of shortages when they occur, including in collaboration with provincial and territorial governments, industry stakeholders, health system partners, and patient organizations. “We will do everything we can” to mitigate the situation, he said.
“Health Canada has a number of tools available to help address and prevent drug shortages,” the agency said in an email to CTVNews.ca.
“These include allowing temporary flexibilities in regulatory requirements to speed up the process of bringing medicines to the Canadian market, accelerating the approval of new drugs or changes to existing medicines, and allowing foreign countries manufactured to similar standards to Canadian This includes permission to import approved pharmaceuticals, etc. This is a genuine product.”
In part two of our series on drug shortages, CTVNews.ca looks at the factors that cause shortages, how pharmacies can address them, and ways Canada may be able to alleviate drug shortages.
