PATIENTS who are reaching the end of their life are suffering more distress due to an ongoing shortage of morphine-based medicines.
Over the past 12 months, atleast six essential pain-relievingmedications and productshave been withdrawn from theAustralian market, according to Dr Michelle Gold, current President of the Australia New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine and Alfred Hospital's Director of Palliative Medicine.
"We have been alerting theTGA and the Health Minister of this looming crisis for close to a year now," Dr Gold said.
"It is extremely frustrating that essential morphine-based medicines prescribed daily are in such short supply or not available at all.
"We are being forced to use medicines or products which not only results in less effective pain relief, but may lead to unwanted side effects," Dr Gold stressed.
In addition, the situation is worse in private and rural and remote settings, where the processes for pharmacists to access medicines from the shortage list (known as S19A list), are more complex and can be cost prohibitive, he said.
"If a medicine is listed under S19A as being a substitute for the PBS-listed medicine, the alternative may very well not have a PBS listing, so that medicine is very expensive," said Gold.
For example, morphine liquid can be up to 10 times more expensive.
Even worse is Hydromorphone SR (slow release) as previously, a pack of 100 x 32mg tablets of the Australian product would be $182, Gold explained.
"This has been removed from the market and the overseas alternative is $4,209 for 100 tablets, which is 23 times more expensive," he remarked.
"I am sure anyone can see the problem here."
The Federal Government is currently seeking advice for an upcoming medicines shortage reform process. JG
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