Minister of Health Vlastimil Válek spoke at a press conference on the current situation regarding the availability of medicines, February 10, 2023, Prague.
Prague – This year, according to Minister of Health Vlastimil Válk (TOP 09), the consumption of antibiotics increased by 300,000 packages year-on-year, i.e. by 47 percent. Increased consumption also affected their availability in recent weeks, but it is now decreasing. According to Deputy Minister Jakub Dvořáček, the situation on the drug market should stabilize at the end of February. According to him, antibiotics in tablets are already available, suspensions are still missing. They said it at today's press conference.
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“Partly we managed to speed up part of the deliveries, partly we managed to get medicines to the Czech Republic that would not have been here at all. Falling demand also plays a part in this,” said Válek.
Válek rejected the criticism of the parliamentary opposition that he carries personal responsibility for lack of medicines. According to him, there are several reasons why medicines are missing in other countries as well, and they cannot be influenced at the national level. Among them, he mentioned production restrictions in China, due to which mainly medicine packaging is missing. Similarly, the situation was affected by the war in Ukraine, where a significant part of the drugs was also produced.
Medicine production is planned roughly a year in advance and according to consumption from recent years. According to Válk, the drugs for the beginning of this year were planned for the beginning of 2022. However, the consumption is significantly higher than in 2021, when morbidity was low thanks to anti-epidemic measures. “Covid ended and a wave of flu started, a large number of patients in a relatively very short time,” added the minister. Manufacturers could not react immediately, and during the first outages, consumption increased even more, as people began to stock up.
The minister also refused to connect the current shortage of medicines with their supplies to Ukraine. “We sent the medicines last year at the turn of spring and summer,” he said. According to him, these were drugs used mainly in acute medicine and in the treatment of injuries. “These are completely different drugs that are used now for colds or angina,” he added.
