The government has finally updated its list of out-of-stock medicines after a lapse of two months and confirmed that at least 22 medicines are currently not available.
A Health Ministry web page providing updates about medicines on the government formulary that are currently unavailable is meant to be updated weekly, but had remained unchanged since November 7.
Times of Malta reported the missing weekly reports on December 29. Since then, it has emerged that medicine shortages were impacting almost all classes of pharmaceuticals and the situation is expected to drag on for several months.
The European Medicines Authority has noted that 25 EU member states are currently facing shortages of antibiotics due to a combination of increased demand, delays in manufacturing and production capacity issues.
In all, eight weekly reports about out-of-stock medicine are missing from the Pharmacy of Your Choice (POYC) Unit website, while many of the available reports are incomplete.
PN: Update confirms problems
In a statement on Monday, the Nationalist Party noted that the update confirmed the state of out-of-stock medicines and the growing number of medicines that are out of stock. This led it to request an urgent meeting with the Parliamentary Health Committee to discuss the issue. This meeting will be held next week.
The PN said that the government has confirmed that there is a serious problem since the list shows 22 medicines out of stock, some of which have not been available for several weeks.
“The list also shows that this problem will continue in the coming weeks because the government is not in a position to say when it will be resolved. Instead, in most cases of medicines indicated as out of stock, the government is blaming the suppliers,” the PN said.
In its statement, signed by spokespersons Stephen Spiteri, Ian Vassallo and Claudette Buttigieg, the PN asked the government to publish a list of medicines that are low in stock.
It added that the list was important so that medicine importers can help the government obtain the medicines that are low in stock rather than wait until the medicines are out of stock.