Why is Germany facing medicine shortages?
Supply shortfalls for key medicines are getting worse.
Dear Reader,
If you have nursery-aged children, you don’t need me to tell you: autumn is here, and so are those unwelcome visitors that hitchhike up our children’s noses before they spread them all over our homes.
Last October, my personal "gift" from the nursery was a nasty bout of strep throat.
The merest glance at my tonsils was all my GP needed to prescribe two weeks’ worth of antibiotics. While writing the prescription, she muttered something about pharmacies often not having it in stock but assured me it was the right medication for me.
I spent the next hour dragging myself from one Apotheke to the next, but I was always met with the same response: the pharmacist looked sceptically at the prescription, rummaged around in a back room, apologised for not having it in stock, and then offered me alternatives.
Defeated, I returned to the doctor. I could barely croak out why I had come back, but she already knew. She scribbled out a new prescription, said it wasn’t ideal, but at least most pharmacies had it in stock.
Anyone who has needed antibiotics, painkillers or fever medicine during the past couple of winters probably knows what I’m talking about.
Since 2018, the German government has maintained a central database of medicine shortages - and they are getting more acute every year. In 2020, some 800 medicines were listed as being in short supply. By 2023 that number had risen to 1,400.
Last winter, pharmacists reported completely running out some flu remedies for children. “Liquid penicillin remains unavailable,” a Munich paediatrician told Bayerische Rundfunk in January.
With another winter approaching, pharmacists are once again warning of impending shortages of painkillers, adding to current strain on supplies of diabetes and blood pressure medication. Meanwhile, hospitals have said that they may need to delay some surgery due to a lack of saline solution.
What is going on here?!
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