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00:52a product has been withdrawn is really disappointing and it's just unfortunate.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.