Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says the mandatory reporting by pharmaceutical companies of impending drug shortages "is not the silver bullet" to prevent any future scarcity of crucial medications.
Health facilities are already keeping a close eye on their drug supplies and have reported having only a few weeks' worth of certain medications after Sandoz Canada shut down production to upgrades its plant in Boucherville, Que.
The plant announced last month that it suspended operations after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration raised concerns about safety procedures. A few weeks ago, the plant was also felled by a fire.
Sandoz Canada supplies 90 per cent of injectable drugs used in this country.
MPs unanimously passed an NDP motion in Parliament Wednesday that calls for an immediate plan to deal with the drug crunch, including a provision that would make it mandatory for drug companies to inform Health Canada about production disruptions or potential shortages.
Aglukkaq said Wednesday that "mandatory reporting is not the silver bullet."
"You can't obviously plan for a fire in a plant," she told CTV's Power Play. "So how do you deal with that?"
Aglukkaq acknowledged that officials at Sandoz could have notified pharmacists sooner about the production shut down. The company received its letter from the FDA in November.
Sandoz officials have since pledged to provide the provinces and territories with 90 days' notice of future disruptions.
But Aglukkaq said the issue also makes clear that the provinces and territories, which purchase the drugs, need to be able to get the drugs they need from more than one company.
"The lesson learned in all of this is that we need to ensure the jurisdictions that deliver health care have those back-up plans," she said.
Sandoz supplies more than 100 mostly injectable drugs to the Canadian market, from pain medications to anti-nausea drugs to blood thinners used during heart surgery.
The NDP motion carried Wednesday followed an emergency debate on the issue in the House on Monday, led by the party's health critic Libby Davies.
The motion demands that the government should:
- in co-operation with provinces, territories and industry, develop a nationwide strategy to anticipate, identify, and manage shortages of essential medications;
- require drug manufacturers to report promptly to Health Canada any planned disruption or discontinuation in production; and
- expedite the review of regulatory submissions in order to make safe and effective medications available to the Canadian public.
Aglukkaq said Health Canada has stepped up its process for granting licenses to companies to manufacture the medications that Sandoz produces. The timeline has been shortened from six months to six weeks, she said.
Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne said it's imperative that provinces be able to purchase medications from more than one company. But he said part of the problem is that while Health Canada already allows multiple manufacturers to produce some of these drugs, the pharmaceutical companies choose not to "for business reasons."
For example Alberta, with a population of 3.8 million people, does not present a large enough market to make it worthwhile for a manufacturer to produce a certain drug.
"But my thought, and I think the thinking of ministers across the country, is that if we pool our demand together for the drugs that are in shortest supply, we can increase our leverage with manufacturers," Horne told Power Play.
"And if Health Canada and the federal government are willing to step up and pave the way with regulatory approvals in a timely fashion, we can not only address the current situation but we can ensure a more stable supply chain in the future."
Prime Stephen Harper told Parliament that his government is seeking solutions for the problem. But he added that buying from one company can pose issues.
"The provinces are responsible for purchasing their drugs. In this case, they purchased the drugs on a sole-source basis, and that source has come under stress ... we are working with them trying to address this problem."
Dr. Rick Chisholm, president of the Canadian Anesthesiologists' Society, said that measuring the shortage even in the short-term requires co-ordinated effort.
"What I've heard from the rest of the country is (hospitals are) sort of taking stock of what inventory they have, what their typical usage is, trying to figure out how long their stocks are going to last, looking up what supplies Sandoz has told them they're going to be able to ship," he told The Canadian Press.
