Australians were recently alerted to the critical shortage of life saving medical products including intravenous fluids which are essential in our hospitals and operating theatres. It’s been reported that the shortage is so bad that some hospitals are being forced to cancel elective surgeries.
As if our health system wasn’t under enough pressure!
But it’s even worse than that, the Therapeutic Goods Administration advises there are shortages across more than 400 products - including frequently used antibiotics and painkillers.
This problem is not new. A 2020 report states “Australia has almost no capacity to manufacture any active pharmaceutical product for most of the products listed on World Health Organisation's list of Essential Medicines.” Why? Because “we have incrementally outsourced almost all of our medicine supply chain to the global market.”
It turns out that Australia imports around 90% of the medicines we consume, and what little we do manufacture, we mostly export! It’s made worse by the fact that we’re at the end of a very long global supply chain that makes us vulnerable to supply chain disruptions…. Like ‘pandemics!’
How on earth did we get here?
I don’t know. But a report notes that agreements made over a decade ago between the government and the pharmaceutical industry may have played a role. These agreements secured compulsory price drops in generic drugs in exchange for a commitment to restrain policy development in the area of new drug groups on the PBS - a crucial mechanism in controlling the cost of new (and patented) medicines.
The result?
The generic drug industry (which used to be predominantly Australian-owned firms) has largely closed its research and manufacturing arms and moved the bulk of its activities offshore, destroying our capacity to respond to a public health emergency by rapidly scaling up production of essential medicines in Australia.
Once again, Australia is relying on other countries and factors beyond our control, to provide what we need rather than securing the essentials and looking after the interests of the Australian people.
