Thursday, December 3, 2009

Apotex Shortages Explained

Good Morning.

I woke up this morning to rain. Not snow. I guess that's okay for this time of year.

First guy that walks into the pharmacy was looking for his Oxycontin. Sorry, still too early. And tomorrow will also be too early. See you in a few weeks.

Funny how when there was a shortage of pharmacists a few years ago, the media didn't cover it like they cover the doctor shortage, eh?

Seriously, I know we're not preceived as more important, but why not at least give us some recognition for what we do for the public.

In other news, I spoke with a rep from Apotex yesterday about all the drug shortages that pharmacies all over Ontario (and probably Canada) have been experiencing. Here is basically what he told me: Apotex applied for approval of it's Canadian facilities to manufacture drugs for sale in the US. The FDA told them to change a bunch of things to get up to their standards (uh, oh). So then the rest of the world decided we want to do what the FDA does. Now, Apotex is going through major process, SOP, and QA adjustments in all of it's plants. For example, they found traces of penicillin in one of the plants that isn't supposed to have penicillin in it (big uh, oh.) And so during this whole process, they have shut down or slowed down manufacturing certain lines or drugs or whatever. End result, pharmacies can't get product they rely on, and patients are suffering.

That's all I've got on that. I guess this is good for all the other generic companies.

What else is happening in the world of health today? There's been some talk about increased incidence of infection in ICU's. They're saying infections in half of the world's ICUs!!? I have a good friend who is an ICU doctor. His nick name in Univeristy was "filthy". Coincidence?

I also got some good gossip on where various people in the industry are today (ie, job changes, etc). But, I'll save that for another day.

4 comments:

  1. Manufacturer shortages can be a real pain, but I always remind myself that we enjoy a relatively uninterrupted supply of quality pharmaceutials in North America. Not so in many parts of the world. We do tend to take it for granted.

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