The era of medicines at discount prices is over

Sometimes it's the fever syrup, sometimes it's antibiotics, sometimes even cancer medicines are not available: Ironically, when it comes to important medicines, there is a shortage in Germany in some cases, as one would expect in an undersupplied emerging country. And not in one of the economically strongest countries in the world.

It is therefore to be welcomed that Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is now making the lack of availability of medicines a top priority. For far too long, governments of all persuasions have pushed the problem aside in this country, as if it were about banal everyday objects instead of products that are sometimes essential for survival.

Because even if it may sound like this in view of the many calls for help from pharmacies, medical practices, clinics and above all from desperate parents on social media: the lack of medication is not a new phenomenon. Supply bottlenecks and dangerous supply gaps have existed for years, with vaccines as well as with medicines.

After three years of the pandemic, however, the problem has reached a dimension that can no longer be easily ignored. In many places, production has long been running at full speed again. But in China of all places, the world's workbench for most of the raw materials in the pharmaceutical industry, things are still problematic: first because of the tough lockdown, now because of the omicron wave, which is hitting a hitherto little protected population. At the same time, the demand for many standard medicines is even higher in many countries than usual at this time of year – also because of the sometimes unusually severe outbreaks of RSV, influenza and scarlet fever.

Higher fixed prices, such as Lauterbach is now proposing for children's medicines, are certainly not entirely wrong. In fact, the need to economize on many imitation drugs has been pushed to the extreme in recent years, which is why more and more suppliers have withdrawn from the production, which is unprofitable for them.

But the causes of the problem go much deeper. What you can also see from the fact that not only Germany has a drug problem at the moment. The USA, Canada, Great Britain and France – to name just a few examples – also lack antibiotics and fever reducers.

"With this large wave of infection, it becomes threatening," says Gabriele R. Overwiening, President of the Federal Union of German Pharmacists' Associations. She is demanding more support from Minister of Health Lauterbach.

Source: world

Now it's taking its revenge on the fact that the urge for medicines to be as cheap as possible has led to an extreme concentration in the manufacture of medicines. In part, the supply of key drug ingredients depends on the weal and woe of a few remaining manufacturers in China and India. If one of them fails, the whole world has a problem.

However, most of the suggestions for improvement from Lauterbach's ministry, from stricter monitoring of delivery problems to additional remuneration for pharmacists who remix deficiency preparations, will not change anything. And simply spending more money on a scarce product does not change the scarcity and in the worst case - similar to the masks at the beginning of the corona pandemic - would only lead to absurd bidding by the richest nations.

What is therefore mainly needed is a European approach that really deserves the name. And who ensures that production capacities for important active ingredients on the continent are expanded in order to reduce dependencies. So far, however, the strict environmental guidelines have sometimes no longer permitted production in this country. Europe would also have to work on this technically and regulatory - instead of simply outsourcing the problem to India and China, as has been the case so far, with little lasting effect.

All of this will take time and, above all, significantly more money than before. Society will have to adjust to this: the days of a secure supply of medicines at the previous discount prices are over.

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