Many medicines such as fever juices for children or cough blockers are still difficult to get in Berlin pharmacies in April. According to the Berliner Apotheker-Verein, the situation has hardly calmed down since Christmas due to delivery bottlenecks. “This runs through the entire range,” said CEO Anke Rüdinger of the German Press Agency.
According to the pharmacist, not only medicines for children, but also blood pressure medication or cholesterol-lowering drugs are affected by the bottlenecks. According to the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, there are supply bottlenecks for more than 470 medicines in Germany (as of April 9, 2023).
According to the information, there are bottlenecks among all members of the state association, which includes almost 640 pharmacy owners from Berlin. Because many children have scarlet fever, antibiotic juices are currently particularly scarce. In the event of a shortage of goods, supplies are always replenished: “But we can never say when that will be,” said Rüdinger, who runs a pharmacy in Berlin-Lichtenberg.
So far, however, there have been no supply bottlenecks. “We still find solutions for the patients in the vast majority of cases.” The pharmacists would just have to “conjure up” – if the paracetamol juice is gone, then you take an ibuprofen juice, for example. “The main thing is that the feverish child gets a fever-reducing juice.”
In order to avoid bottlenecks in important preparations, the federal cabinet passed a draft law last week to provide stronger security for the supply of medicines. Among other things, this includes new price rules intended to make deliveries to Germany more attractive for manufacturers. (dpa)
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