Australia is facing a concerning shortage of more than 300 medicines. 

Doctors and pharmacists are calling for a national strategy to prevent drug shortages, with treatments for diabetes, hormone replacement therapy, depression, nausea, stroke and contraception among 320 drugs listed by the TGA as in current short supply, with about 50 of these listed as critical.

Another 80 are anticipated to be in short supply, including anti-venom for the funnel web spider, and a drug used in leukaemia treatment.

The Pharmacy Guild says shortages of off-the-shelf cold and flu medications, including liquid paracetamol for children, are occurring too, prompting new measures to try and manage supplies.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) says the shortages have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic affecting international supply chains.

“What we’re finding is that we’re suddenly getting patients saying I can’t get that medication or the pharmacist has changed it … so this is becoming an increasing problem,” RACGP president Karen Price says.

“There’s many drugs that we’re now encountering that people are unable to get, and that’s a big issue for Australia.

“For a developed nation, it is pretty dire, and medicines are not easily substituted between each other.”

The group is calling for a new national strategy focusing on supply chain management and more manufacturing capability in Australia.

“Being a small market means there’s not a lot of wriggle room in our on-the-shelf reserves, so we do have to look at this more broadly at a strategic level in terms of what our local manufacturing is, our capacity, and also from a risk management point of view with logistics and supply chain experts so that we don’t have to go into a reactive situation or patients go without.”

Pharmacy Guild acting president Nick Panayiaris says a new medicine supply guarantee signed between the federal government and drug manufacturers is helping.

The agreement requires companies to hold a minimum of either four or six months of stock in Australia for certain PBS-listed medicines, but also allows price rises for up to 900 different drugs.

The minimum stock holding requirements come into effect in mid-2023.

“There is a whole sovereign risk issue here. We used to be great manufacturers of medication in the country, and unfortunately more and more of that has been lost, especially the generic medicine industry where a lot of that now is based in India and China and so forth,” he said.

“So the government needs to seriously look at this, because they’re not just any commodity, they are essential medicines, which basically keep people alive.

“They need to look at all measures which improve that security aspect and the sovereign issue around the supply and logistics of making sure that we have got enough [medicines] and we are, where we can, manufacturing our own, or at least sourcing the raw ingredients to some degree and being able to quickly pivot when we need to in terms of the supply chain problems that may arise.”