EU countries for manufacturers: produce more antibiotics!

Over the past winter, shortages of important antibiotics caused major problems in Sweden and other European Union countries. A wave of respiratory infections increased demand to levels that manufacturers did not expect, and the same situation also developed in the United States.

Now the states are trying Prevent the same thing from happening again next winter. At the end of July, a steering group within the EMA joined the Medicines Authority Recommendations on how to prevent recurrence.

The risk of an important antibiotic deficiency

It’s EMA’s Executive Steering Group on Medical Product Shortage and Safety behind the recommendations. The group includes representatives from member states, EMA and the European Commission.

to be able to Working in anticipation of the coming winter, the EMA has collected data on the expected need and availability of important antibiotics against respiratory infections. The scan includes amoxicillin, clavulanic acid, penicillin, azithromycin, clarithromycin, ceftiraxone, cefotaxime, piperacillin and tazobactam.

Use the EMA using previous years to estimate demand. Manufacturers contributed information about their planned production and production capacities.

The greatest danger is with intravenous antibiotics

The EMA’s conclusion is that the greatest risk of shortages this winter relates to intravenous antibiotics. With regard to oral antibiotics, the situation is better, but their margins are small. The planned production here is calculated to be sufficient, provided that the spread of infection and thus demand ends at an average level.

Based on these Data, EMA and EU preparedness body Hera (Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority) recommend that manufacturers should be able to ramp up production of important antibiotics. Therefore, the advice to national authorities is to communicate in a timely manner to antibiotic suppliers about the possibilities of increasing production if necessary.

“It is important that manufacturers act early, before winter, so they can ramp up production capacity when necessary,” says EMA President Emer Cooke at press release from the European Union Commission.

Close monitoring continues

The EU Commission also wrote that it will continue to closely monitor demand development and availability of antibiotics through the rest of the year via Hera.

The purpose is Be able to early detect signs that indicate an approaching antibiotic deficiency in order to implement countermeasures.