The EU and Austria are still highly dependent on imports from China and India for the supply of medicines. After supply shortages during the last flu season, there should have been a turnaround, but it was missed. Hardly anything has happened in Austria since last winter, and at EU level we have not gone beyond the discussion stage. Only France shows how it could work.
Without China and India, things would look bad in Austria; the medicine shelves in pharmacies would be quite empty. 70 to 80 percent of our medicines come from there or require ingredients produced in these two countries for production, the Ö1 “Morgenjournal” reported on Monday.
That should have changed after last winter’s bottlenecks, but apart from individual projects, overall not much has happened to reduce this dependency. In Kundl in Tyrol, for example, Novartis subsidiary Sandoz has announced that it will invest 50 million euros in the site there to produce antibiotics and penicillin.
Expert misses initiatives from Austria
For Alexander Herzog, Secretary General of Pharmig (Association of the Austrian Pharmaceutical Industry), all this is not enough. “We have no significant initiatives from the Ministry of Health or the responsible authorities,” Herzog said on Ö1.The Ministry of Health, in turn, refers to the European Commission, which published a proposal in May to update the EU’s pharmaceutical legislation.
This also defines the goal of bringing pharmaceutical production back to Europe in the long term. This should make medicines available, generally accessible and affordable again. This should also guarantee the supply of medicines in Austria.
France as an exception
The problem is also discussed at EU level. An exception among the Member States is France, which has already initiated a turnaround and announced in June that it would move the production of the raw material or end product for 50 essential medicines – including those against cancer or painkillers – to France, which is investing in this several billion euros. For example, paracetamol will be produced in France again from 2025.
Source: Krone
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