“Emergency medicines” for autumn/winter: supplies don’t last for two weeks!

30.08.2023 11:09

The full-service pharmaceutical wholesaler is sounding the alarm: for 85 percent of the medicines urgently needed for the coming autumn/winter season, the currently available stocks are not even sufficient for two weeks. As the Federal Association PHAGRO makes clear in a letter to Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, it is “objectively impossible to procure these drugs from the pharmaceutical industry, let alone build up stocks.”

PHAGRO bases its information on an emergency list for the coming months that was recently published by the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) and includes around 400 drugs. These include numerous antibiotics and medicines for children, some of which have been in short supply or not available for more than a year.

For PHAGRO, the current supply situation before the start of the autumn/winter season is already “extremely precarious”. The federal association supports this statement in its letter with the following facts:

• In the past few months, more than a quarter of emergency medicines could not be procured by wholesalers because the pharmaceutical industry was unable to provide any goods.
• An eighth of the listed preparations have been taken out of circulation by the manufacturers or are no longer marketed.
• For more than half of emergency medicines, pharmaceutical companies only deliver 20 percent of the goods requested by wholesalers.
• Alternative procurement channels, e.g. by bringing or importing medicines that are not approved in Germany from other EU member states and third countries, can, if possible, only lead to an improvement in the supply situation in individual cases.

PHAGRO only sees remaining chances of improving the current situation in ten percent of the medicines mentioned. “All other options on our part have been completely exhausted,” wrote PHAGRO chairman Marcus Freitag and his deputy Lothar Jenne to the Federal Minister of Health. You call on Lauterbach to “combat the causes of delivery and supply bottlenecks by supporting the pharmaceutical industry by promoting the production and development of medicines and by all those involved in the supply of medicines, i.e. by all those involved in the supply of medicines, to cover the expenses necessary for the marketing of medicines as needed “Provide adequate counter-financing for industry, wholesalers and pharmacies.”

With its letter, PHAGRO is responding to the Federal Minister of Health's repeated demands publicly and in a letter to the Federal Association that pharmaceutical wholesalers should intensify their efforts to procure and stock emergency medicines. Since this could have given rise to the public impression that the full-service pharmaceutical wholesaler is partly responsible for delivery bottlenecks and shortages of medicines, the PHAGRO board has decided to publish the letter to the Federal Minister of Health in full. You find the text here.