AUSTRALIA | A shortage of essential palliative care medicines has been felt by patients, especially those in end-of-life-care.
Growing shortages of essential palliative care medicines in Australia are having a devastating impact on patients, especially those nearing the end of life, and the clinicians who care for them.
“Patients are suffering unnecessarily, enduring heightened pain and distress, because the medications that typically control their symptoms are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive,” said Dr Peter Allcroft, Chair, Palliative Care Australia.
“I am even aware of people ending up in hospital as a result of not being able to access the medicines they need – adding to the distress families feel and placing further pressure on our overstretched hospital system.”
Despite sector representations to the Minister for Health, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and the Department of Health and Aged Care, there has been little progress toward ensuring a stable supply of these life-changing drugs.
“A collective of seven organisations wrote to parliamentarians in early December trying to escalate this issue after months and months of slow or no progress, people, including children are dying without adequate pain relief,” Dr Allcroft said.
In fact, the situation has been building for several years and has become especially challenging in the past 12 months as global supply chains and pharmaceutical companies falter and reprioritise.
Most of the affected medicines are vital opioid analgesics that have been used for decades to manage severe pain and other symptoms in palliative care patients. With the supply of these drugs becoming increasingly uncertain, clinicians are forced to prescribe less effective alternatives, resulting in less reliable pain relief and risking unwanted side effects.
Adding to the distress is cost, with many of the alternative medications not subsidised through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). One of the most startling examples is hydromorphone SR, which costs the public AUD 182 for 32mg. The overseas alternative, which is not PBS-listed, is AUD 4209 for 100 tablets – 23 times more expensive!
As part of the ‘better access to palliative care’ campaign leading up to the federal election, PCA has launched an 11-point plan to resolve this ongoing issue.
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