More and more medicines are not available: 450 products are currently affected in Austria. Why is it? You will find answers at the country’s main wholesaler, which fills 1,600 crates daily for the Tyrolean market in Rum near Innsbruck.
There are countless blue boxes in the queue. They are all filled in the next few minutes and then delivered in small trucks marked “urgent medicines” all over Tyrol.
Delivery bottlenecks: “It’s not our fault”
Every day, 30,000 packs of medicines leave Herba Chemosan’s warehouse in Rum near Innsbruck. The market leader in pharmaceutical wholesale (45% market share) supplies 110 community pharmacies and 40 medical pharmacies in the country.
They are facing increasing supply problems. 450 medicines are currently difficult or not available in Austria. “It is not our fault,” emphasizes Maximilian Künsberg Sarre. The boss of Herba Chemosan explains that the crises have left drug manufacturers – many of them in Asia – with shortages of materials and personnel. Supplying wholesalers is not the problem.
Covid vaccine must be stored at minus 80 degrees
The 3,500 square meter warehouse in Rum manages 16,000 different medicines. These include Covid vaccines from various manufacturers, which must be stored in special refrigerators at minus 80 degrees.
Wholesalers are calling for more stocks
The general stock lasts about three weeks. As president of the European Association of Whole Pharmaceutical Wholesalers, Bernd Grabner advocates “bigger inventories”. He presented this on Thursday during a company tour to State Secretary Florian Tursky and the new Tyrolean health LR Cornelia Hagele (both ÖVP). Grabner points to the Netherlands, which recently made stocks of the most important medicines mandatory for times of crisis. In Austria, this has been happening with potassium iodide tablets since the Chernobyl reactor accident.
1600 boxes of medicines delivered every day
Every day 1,600 blue boxes full of medicines leave the Herba-Chemosan warehouse in Rum. “On average, a delivery contains products from 19 manufacturers. One car supplies 20 to 30 customers,” Künsberg Sarre and Grabner emphasize the ecological importance of wholesale compared to direct sales by manufacturers. They see wholesale with its sophisticated logistics as a guarantee of supply stability in times of crisis.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
