Chronically ill people struggling to manage their pain
There is an ongoing opioid medicine shortage in Australia and doctors are warning that chronically ill people are struggling to manage their pain. A series of morphine and other opioid based painkillers have been disappearing from pharmacy shelves this year as drug companies pull products.
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00:00The companies announced the withdrawal of the products from the market but they haven't
00:06given us a reason. We believe that it's going to be a commercial decision.
00:12So it's not a matter of the ingredients not being available?
00:17Not for these products and particularly the morphine based ones, the morphine liquid product,
00:22that's a very long established product and there's no shortage of those ingredients to
00:27the very best of my knowledge.
00:29And so for you, someone working on the front line trying to help people with terrible pain,
00:33how frustrating is it for you that this has happened?
00:38It's really upsetting because it can sometimes take a little bit of fine tuning and working
00:42out what the best regimen is for an individual person and when you've got someone who may
00:47only have a short time left to then have to re-jig all their medications simply because
00:52a product has been withdrawn is really disappointing and it's just unfortunate.
00:59Are substitutes readily available?
01:02There have been some substitutes made available but they're not readily available for most
01:06people and even more of an issue is that they're not available on the PBS so if you can get
01:12hold of them, they are more expensive than the previous ordine product was.
01:17And so in the long term, what can be done to make Australia less susceptible to these
01:22shortages of medication?
01:25Well I'd really like to see some onshore manufacturing if that were possible, I suspect that's a
01:29pretty difficult ask in the short term but that would be fantastic.
01:34What ANSPAM is requesting as a more immediate measure is that we extend that period of notification
01:42to an absolute minimum of 12 months from the time a company notifies us to the time they
01:47withdraw the product.
01:49And what will that mean?
01:51That would just give more time for a suitable substitute to be made available and to have
01:56the PBS application process worked through and then those products should be available
02:02at a subsidised price for patients.
02:05You've been raising the alarm about this for quite some time now.
02:08How do you feel about the government response so far?
02:13We are quite frustrated.
02:15We were reassured that there would be a product available on PBS within a six month time frame
02:21but that hasn't happened and we've been hoping to have some meetings with various ministers
02:26and other organisations and really have not had enough of a response yet to find a solution.
02:34And so are you aware of patients just being unable to get appropriate pain medication
02:40and really suffering as a result of this?
02:44Yes, so a number of doctors are having to switch patients to different products because
02:49they haven't been able to get hold of the liquid morphine product and that comes with
02:53certain risks just by that process of changing over.
02:56So absolutely there's a risk of patients coming to some disadvantage or harm.
03:02And so what's your immediate call to address this now then?
03:06Well we'd certainly encourage the companies that have got the new licence to get that
03:10product to us as quick as possible and really urge the various government agencies to consider
03:15our recommendation for that 12 month minimum notification period.