A Tipperary pharmacist says he has never seen medication shortages to this level before.
Jimmy O’Sullivan of O’Sullivan’s Pharmacy in Fethard was reacting to the news that an injectable for Type 1 Diabetes patients is effectively out of stock.
This only impacts those who use a vile and have an insulin pump, not anyone using a Fiasp pen, however, he is also reassuring people that there are two alternatives if someone is faced with supply issues.
Jimmy told Tipp Today that often younger people use an insulin pump as they are more active and less likely to spend time self-injecting he is urging those patients to look at options sooner rather than later:
“the younger cohort might say sure look if it is not there I wont bother and that is where the crux of it lies. Now there are two alternatives so they will give you the same result but they are slightly different and to switch to another one is tricky, it takes a bit of time to get the right new dose that pump is delivering at a certain rate per hour and you nee do adjust hat they need to keep checking their blood sugar levels for about two to three weeks there is a lot of work in trying to switch over.”
The pharmacist says there are constantly excuses for the frequent mediation shortages being seen now.
He went on to tell Tipp today that since Brexit these kinds of shortages have been commonplace:
“Oh I have never seen anything like it, never seen anything like it and this has been going on for the last two or three years everything is an excuse, but before you would be up in arms but now they say it is just production , it just Brexit like we have an excuse for everything now and no one is taking any responsibility for it but Pharmacists should be able to at least, legally, change particular if there is a shortage that we should be able to say okay this is an equivalent and we are happy that this is exactly the same but we are not legally allowed to do that.”
