The current winter in the northern hemisphere is experiencing an unexpected shortage of medicines of all kinds in many countries, including Switzerland, one of the powerhouses in the pharmaceutical sector, whose senior national official, Martine Ruggli, points out as the cause in is the dependence on Asia, which asks to be reduced.
In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Blick, the president of the association of manufacturers pharmaSuisse recommends that Switzerland “join up with the rest of Europe to try to ensure that all the assets (of the drugs) do not come from Asia”.
“We have to diversify our suppliers, because in all of Europe there is only one company that produces its own antibiotics, the Austrian Sandoz,” Ruggli told the Swiss newspaper.
The president of pharmaSuisse pointed out that the problem is repeated in the rest of the continents, since 90% of the active substances that make up the drugs come from China and India, a “high risk” concentration that can produce problems like the current ones .
“With the end of the zero covid policy in China, their entire population got sick and they needed a lot more antipyretics (fever medicine) and painkillers, so Chinese manufacturers drastically reduced their overseas sales,” he explained.
According to Ruggli, in Switzerland, this shortage has meant that 7% of the medicines covered by national health insurance are not available, which has started to produce dramatic situations in local pharmacies with the onset of cold weather.
“Currently, there is a lack of painkillers, drugs for the heart, against hypertension, against Parkinson’s, epilepsy or depression, and even treatments for children,” he lamented.