Children’s medicines in short supply
The recent explosion in viral infections and the increased demand for medicines to treat their symptoms, combined with the holiday season and low market supply, as many pharmaceutical companies are closed for Christmas and New Year, is exacerbating shortages of well-known medicines, especially children’s ones such as analgesics, antihistamines and decongestants, and inhalers too.
For their part, pharmacists are appealing to the public, especially parents of children with viral infections, to place their trust in them.
Speaking to Kathimerini, the president of the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association, Apostolos Valtas, said that “at the moment there are alternatives.”
“Parents should not insist on the one particular syrup they know. There are syrups from other companies that have the same action. They should trust us when we suggest something else,” he said, noting the role that can be played by generic medicines other than the ones prescribed by doctors.
“We have a war scene right now. Not only in our country but internationally… pharmacies are constantly in communication with the doctor to change the prescription so that the citizen can be served with another formula,” he said.
The general secretary of the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association, Manolis Katsarakis, noted the need for medicines to be delivered on demand.
“For example, for an antidiarrheal or an antipyretic syrup, it makes no sense to tell the patient that you will look for it and you will have it in one or two days, as you would for other drugs. It’s something you have to provide them with at that time,” he explained.
At this stage most of the drugs involved in the treatment of flu-like symptoms are either absent or in short supply, Valtas said. The problem is mainly focused on the drugs that have paracetamol and amoxicillin as their active substance.
Valtas noted that these substances are monopolistically produced in China and India and lately the quantities available on the market have been unable to meet demand.
Among the reasons for the insufficient production of these substances are less manpower due to the pandemic and the fact that this year’s increased demand due to the outbreak of viruses was not properly estimated.
