Bavaria's Minister of Health, Klaus Holetschek, visits the Dachau pharmacy
Created: 11/30/2022, 7:49 p.m
By: Stefanie Zipfer
On-site meeting in front of empty drawers: Bavaria's Minister of Health Klaus Holetschek (l.) and member of the state parliament Bernhard Seidenath (middle) visited Maximilian Lernbecher in his pharmacy in the old town.
Topic: the current drug shortage.
Photo: habschied © habschied
Bavaria's Health Minister Klaus Holetschek found out about the acute shortage of medicines in Maximilian Lernbecher's upper pharmacy in Dachau on Wednesday.
His recipe against the bottleneck: a Bavarian pharmaceutical task force that should enable doctors, insurance companies and pharmacists to provide patients with "pragmatic" care.
Dachau
– In the drawer where the paracetamol and ibuprofen juices are usually stored: yawning emptiness.
The supply of pantoprazole, digitoxin or rosuvastatin: depleted.
After all, there are still residues of cholesterol-lowering drugs and an antibiotic for urinary tract infections.
In summary, it can probably be best formulated like this: In the upper pharmacy in the old town of Dachau, there is a shortage economy.
And for almost eleven months.
Customer from Ingolstadt
Maximilian Lernbecher, owner of the upper pharmacy and deputy chairman of the Bavarian Association of Pharmacists (BAV), emphasizes that he is not the only pharmacist suffering from the shortage of medicines.
The problem affects all colleagues, in Bavaria as well as in Germany.
Above all, however, it affects the patients: “Not only do many of them have to call several pharmacies and then have to put up with long distances to get their prescriptions filled – a customer from Ingolstadt recently drove up to get heart medication for his sick mother. Many would also be unsure about the basic supply of medicines in this country: "They doubt the system." Therefore, according to Lernbecher, it is important that "something finally gets moving"!
This movement, promised Bavarian Minister of Health Klaus Holetschek on Wednesday at a press event in Lernbecher's upper pharmacy, which now exists.
On the one hand, his “Bavarian Pharma Task Force” would ensure that drug safety in Bavaria would be strengthened pragmatically and quickly.
And on the other hand, it should send a clear alarm signal to Berlin and Brussels "that we will end our dependence on countries with production monopolies and create supply chains that are less susceptible to crises".
Over 60 percent of the medicines used in this country came from China and India.
Not a drug bottleneck, but a supply bottleneck
In fact, as Lernbecher also confirms, there is no pharmaceutical bottleneck in Bavaria, but rather a supply bottleneck.
But he specifies: “The raw materials are there.” What is missing are usually “the preliminary products”: i.e. paper for package inserts, cardboard for packaging, glass for the juice.
"Somewhere in the supply chain, the producers, also in Germany, always lack something."
He therefore finds the “task force” a good thing, in which representatives of the BAV, associations and companies from the pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical wholesalers and health insurance companies also take part.
It enables pharmacists to deal with supply bottlenecks “unbureaucratically”.
He also explicitly thanked the minister for dealing with the pharmacists “with a sense of proportion”.
Until 2020, i.e. in the years before the corona pandemic and before the introduction of the so-called SARS-CoV-2 Drug Supply Ordinance, pharmacists were not allowed to simply dispense and bill for tablets instead of a juice prescribed by prescription.
In the past, it was also not possible to issue two packs of 10 instead of one pack of 20 for a specific drug.
During Corona, these strict requirements were relaxed, but this regulation is due to expire on March 31, 2023.
Lernbecher and his colleagues are therefore demanding that they be allowed to continue to follow this Corona regulation, at least for the duration of the supply chain crisis.
This also enables learning cups & co. to help themselves.
For example, the Dachau company now produces paracetamol and ibuprofen juices itself, and “one to two percent” of its range comes from its own laboratory.
Being able to continue to bill these with the cash registers is important – even if he makes it clear at the same time: “The cash registers have to keep an eye on the costs.
Discount contracts make sense, they save money!”
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Until the crisis is over, the pharmacist, also on behalf of his colleagues, asks the customers for their understanding.
Above all, he asks for restraint when it comes to stocking up on medicines: "There is no reason to hoard!" Basically, it is "important that we all become more flexible".
More than a bottle of fever juice, for example, "I'm just not going to give it away".
