Coronavirus: doctors back US ambassador’s call for medicine security

The peak doctors association has thrown its weight behind the outgoing US ambassador’s call for Australia to secure critical supplies of medicines.

Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid says Australia’s dependence on other countries for our medical supplies has left the system at risk of shortages. Picture: Daniel Pockett

The peak doctors association has thrown its weight behind the outgoing US ambassador’s call for Australia to secure critical supplies of medicines and medical goods.

As the Australian Medical Association called for a national strategy to address a key risk to the country’s medical system, a leading economist said China’s aggressive trade actions over the past 12 months had exposed the “naivety” of global supply chains that focused exclusively on efficiency at the cost of security and resilience.

In his final interview before leaving the country, Arthur Culvahouse said the “Five Eye”nations — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US — alongside allies including Japan and India should work together to create alternative sources of supply for critical minerals, medical goods and pharmaceuticals.

AMA president Omar Khorshid said the country’s doctors had long been concerned about the supply of critical medications, which had left shortages of basic medicines even before the pandemic. “COVID has really exposed how little we manufacture here in Australia, and how exposed we are to trade shocks,” he said.

“We certainly need to do more to secure our stocks of medicines.”

Dr Khorshid said the country in the first instance must do better at tracking supplies of key medicines and there needed to be more stockpiling to prevent shortages. “Longer term, we need to look at our own manufacturing capacity and diversification of supply.

“COVID HAS underlined how vulnerable our medical system is,” he said.

EQ Economics principal Warren Hogan said the departing ambassador was highlighting “that multilateralism is dead as the world’s second-biggest economy is no longer playing by the rules.”

He said over recent decades, there had been a “naivety” to global supply chains, which reflected a push for efficiency with little regard to resilience — a naivety that had now been exposed.