October 2020 - Newsletter #10

Warnings About Drug Shortages Are Piling Up

Last week, Stat News in the United States published an article which cites a recent report by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.

Stat News says, "[a]s of now, 43% - or 67 of 156 - of acute care medicines used to treat various illnesses are running low. This group includes such staples as antibiotics, blood thinners, and sedatives."

"'The supply chain has already been stressed over the past few years, but as we go through the fall and into the winter, we're going to have some real challenges' thanks to Covid-19, said Michael Osterholm, director of CIDRAP and co-principal investigator of the center's Resilient Drug Supply Project."

Shortages are Worldwide and Across Multiple Drug Classes

It is not just drugs for treating Covid-19 that are at risk of being shorted or that have been shorted since the pandemic began. As we previously reported, there have been prescription drug shortages 'across the board' during the pandemic and these have occurred in countries all over the world.

Just last week we highlighted the story of a cancer patient in Summerville, South Carolina who could not source her breast cancer medication due to prescription drug shortages.

On Friday, the media reported that "[p]harmacists and doctors in New Zealand are scrambling to find ways to manage global medication shortages because of Covid-19". Among the drugs in short supply are "contraceptive pills, hormone replacement therapy, an inhaler used by asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease sufferers, blood pressure medications and anti-parkinson's drugs."

In the UK, there are already shortages of various important medicines as their second wave takes off, so much so that doctors there have called for changes to laws to permit pharmacists to alter prescriptions. At least 200 drugs have been placed on an export ban in the UK due to shortages.

CNN notes that "closed factories, shipping delays or shutdowns and trade limitations or export bans have severely impacted the supply side of the chain".

Covid-19-related shocks to integrated pharmaceutical production systems have also led to serious concerns being expressed by drug manufacturers, the American Medical Association, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the European Union, and pharmacists in the United Kingdom and Canada about the disruption in the supply of pharmaceuticals since the coronavirus crisis began. Leading doctors and pharmacists in Canada say the shortages could "imperil … lives". The Wall Street Journal is one of several media outlets reporting this issue and a member of Congress from Pennsylvania penned an Op-Ed piece on this very topic. The publication, MDLinx for healthcare professionals, also highlighted the issue of critical drug shortages caused by Covid-19.

For wisely skeptical consumers who may be inclined to think this is all marketing hype to stimulate sales, we encourage you to learn why that is not the case.

Your Advantage During Times of Drug Shortages

So many people have learned they have a distinct advantage during times of drug shortages through NorthWestPharmacy.com because, for more than a decade, we've built a trusted, vetted and licensed supply network which spans multiple countries from which we source products from. If there is a shortage in one region, we will shift sourcing to another region that has available supply. When customers could not acquire their vital medicines locally or anywhere else in many instances during the pandemic, we have been able to quickly source them and at lower prices from one or more of our approved suppliers and get them on their way to the customers. In fact, we have available the drug that the above referenced breast cancer patient could not acquire locally in the United States.

Despite our robust sourcing capabilities, however, there have been prescription drugs that were out of stock worldwide during the pandemic and despite our best efforts in such cases, medication may be unavailable. While we are working hard to anticipate inventory needs and secure difficult to source products as the second wave of Covid-19 is spreading, we are mindful that we cannot anticipate and adjust for every circumstance.

Please Help Us Help You

So please help us help you to get your medications to you. The best thing you can do to help secure inventory for your medications is to order well in advance. This gives us more time, if necessary, to procure what might be difficult to source inventory and get it shipped to you well before you are going to run out of your supply at home. We encourage customers who may need medications in the coming months to place their orders now.

With more than 375,000 customer reviews, NorthWestPharmacy.com is the most reviewed and independently five-star rated online pharmacy in the world providing lower cost medications from abroad to customers worldwide. Nobody offering safe and affordable pharmaceuticals from abroad can match our supply and delivery capacity during this difficult time so please be assured we are successfully leveraging all our capacity and ensuring orders reach customers as fast as possible in the circumstances.

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