Revealed: The drugs in short supply as nation warned to make its own

Australia must start manufacturing its own medications or fall victim to supply chain issues, the Pharmacy Guild warns.

Common prescription drugs will be harder to come by unless Australia starts investing in the domestic manufacturing of medicines amid a potential supply chain crisis, experts warn.

Pharmacy Guild of Australia national president Professor Trent Twomey said the supply chain for medicines was stretched to its limit, and cracks were beginning to show, with blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes drugs ­already affected.

The warning comes as scientists say Australia “could and should” set itself up to supply not only itself, but the region with all future vaccine and essential drug needs, or risk “remaining hostage” to large pharmaceutical firms.

Experts say the Federal ­Government imports over 90 per cent of the ­country’s medicines and associated supplies, and Professor Twomey said that the situation was ­almost at breaking point.

“We don’t believe there is the right balance between domestic manufacturing and overseas imports of medicines in Australia. In fact, our system is too heavily reliant upon overseas imports,” he said.

“To have balance and to have the most secure supply chain that we need, we must invest in domestic manufacturing.”

Professor Twomey said the availability of all medications was under threat due to supply chain issues, including blood pressure, cholesterol, and ­diabetes drugs.

“Before we have outages, we have shortages. So if you’re on a particular medication, you know the supply chain is under stress when you can’t get consistency of brand,” he said.

“That’s the first sign that the supply chain is under stress.

“The next thing after inconsistency of brand is inconsistency of supply, where we can’t get any brand.”

The Federal Government announced on April 4 that it would invest $23 million in support of local manufacturing of lifesaving medicines.

Dr David Sparling, chief executive of pharmaceutical production company IDT Australia, said Australia needed to grow the manufacturing of ­essential medicines as a matter of urgency and security.

“At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, you may have seen India shut their borders to the export of certain essential medicines and we did have supply chain issues, which directly resulted from that,” he said.

“Any escalation in global tensions or any conflict in the subcontinent or China could absolutely kick that off again.”

A Therapeutic Goods Administration spokesman said the Government was working closely with industry peak ­bodies to enable early detection of supply disruptions.