BERN – Swiss hospitals are increasingly faced with a shortage of medicines, especially those for the fight against cancer. Added to this, quality problems are encountered, with raw materials from India and China.
Due to increasingly tighter margins, the pharmaceutical branch must "submit to the market economy and companies produce the minimum necessary", André Pannatier, head of the Pharmacy Service of the University Hospital of the Vaud (CHUV), explained to the ATS today. of Lausanne, commenting on information that appeared in the "Sonntagszeitung" and in the "Matin Dimanche". Consequence: products run out, an event "rare in the past but becoming more and more frequent".
This has been a growing problem since 2011. The CHUV had run out of stock of cisplatin, a widely used chemotherapy agent. Like other large Swiss hospitals, it had to get supplies in Germany while waiting for the next supply. "The problem concerns about fifteen medicines," according to Pannatier. Large hospitals are hardest hit, because that's where the cancer drugs are concentrated.
A serious problem – At the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), there are currently around fifty medicines awaiting delivery. "It's a serious problem that takes up a few hours every day," said Laurence Cingria, quality manager at the hospital pharmacy.
Different preparations are affected by the shortage, including vaccines that are "regularly missing". In some cases, the hospital is forced to buy the original, even if it costs more than the generic. Or, alternatively, to get supplies in Germany, a country that offers many generic medicines.
"Each product poses different problems," Cingria explained. Sometimes, the medicines are replaced by a different, perhaps less specific preparation.
In a statement published today on the Swissmedic website, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals confirmed the shortage of some medicines used for chemotherapy. The two main reasons are the rapidly increasing demand and the ongoing restructuring of a factory in Unterach (Austria).
The measures taken in the production plant will make it possible to satisfy demand in the long term, explained the pharmaceutical company, saying it was aware of the importance of the medicines in question.
Quality issues – Another problem concerns the quality. The 75% of cases of authorizations suspended or withdrawn for quality defects concern India or China, according to Pannetier. "Chinese factories are five times less controlled than European sites," he specified. Furthermore, "these two countries produce between 70% and 80% of generic active ingredients," he explained.
Pannetier is not very optimistic about the future: "we need an awareness on the part of the political authorities" in order to put pressure on the producing countries. The consequence would be a probable increase in prices. "If needs increase, costs also increase", concluded the specialist
