Generic Medication Shortages are Compounded by Increasing Demand for Respiratory Setup

Verity Hill^*
*Correspondence: Verity Hill, Department of Pharmacy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom, Email:

Received: 20-Feb-2023, Manuscript No. IJP-23-94124; Editor assigned: 22-Feb-2023, Pre QC No. IJP-23-94124 (PQ); Reviewed: 13-Mar-2023, QC No. IJP-23-94124; Revised: 22-Mar-2023, Manuscript No. IJP-23-94124 (R); Published: 30-Mar-2023, DOI: 10.37532/2249-1848.2023.13(2).44

Description

The new Corona Virus Disease 2019 caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) illness was found and diagnosed in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a worldwide pandemic on March 11th. COVID-19 quickly spread over the world in the months that followed, infecting about 2.5 million individuals by April 23, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on global economies, particularly the pharmaceutical industry. Since there is presently no cure for this rare infectious illness, the pharmaceutical sector is aiding governments in addressing the COVID-19 unmet needs, from study and development initiatives on prospective treatment options to balancing the medications supply chain during a crisis. Along the same lines, pharmaceutical sectors are battling to preserve natural market flow, since the current pandemic has impacted access to important medications at a reasonable price, which is the primary aim of every pharmaceutical system. Together with evaluating the global pharmaceutical system difficulties, a scenario analysis of this business in emerging countries with pharmerging markets may reveal additional implications due to differences. Iran's assessment as a developing country that was severely afflicted by COVID-19 sickness might serve as an excellent example.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to uncover these issues in the context of a developing country with a burgeoning pharmaceutical industry. Being a growing middle-income country, Iran has a generic-based pharmaceutical market, which is governed by a local National Drug Policy (NDP), which was last modified in 2014. The generic-based drug strategy, encouragement of local production, price regulation, and formulation-based national industry are the primary components of Iran's NDP. Iran's Ministry of Health (MOH) promoted local manufacture in order to enhance drug availability and price, which resulted in greater access to quality medicines in Iran. Although more than 95% (in terms of sales volume) of marketed medications in Iran are produced locally, the reliance of these medicines on raw material imports is a difficult issue. Nowadays, the country produces more than half of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API), with the remainder provided by respectable enterprises in India and China, as well as in certain cases by European and Eastern European companies. One of the major worries of the pharmaceutical industry is its reliance on raw material imports from nations such as China, which are affected by COVID-19. As of April 28, 2020, the number of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Iran was 0.9 million, with a fatality ratio of 1.38%, in line with global adjusted statics. According to global statistics, the total cumulative COVID-19-associated hospitalization rate ranged from 0.1% in 10-19 year-olds to 4.3% in 40-49 year-olds and doubled in 50-59 year-olds to 8.2%.Short-term effects of COVID-19 on the health market include demand fluctuations, supply shortages, panic purchasing and stockpiling, regulatory changes, and a shift in communication and promotion to distant contacts via technology and study and development process modifications. Long-term effects of COVID-19 on the health and pharmaceutical market include clearance delays, moving towards self-sufficiency in the pharmaceutical production supply chain, industry growth slowing, and possibly trend shifts in consumption. In the event of induced demand and panic-buying of oral home-medications, particularly for chronic disease, this may be attributable to the pandemic (COVID-19-related), as well as shortages owing to supply-chain inefficiencies. Increasing hospitalization, the occurrence of COVID-19-related pneumonia, and the increased demand for ventilator placement all contribute to prescription drug shortages. A medication shortage is described as "a supply issue that impacts how the pharmacy prepares or administers a medicinal product or has an impact on patient care when prescribers must utilize an alternate agent". On a worldwide scale, various regulatory bodies released confirmed shortage lists, the majority of which included prospective COVID-19 therapies as well as related pneumonia.

Conclusion

Delays in approvals for non-COVID-related pharmaceutical items; because all nations, including Iran, are under strain from the crisis and their priority is COVID-19 management, approval delays may occur as a result of many months of application postponements. The global impact on medicine scarcity ranged by medicine access level, retail versus hospital-only, and kind. Since the beginning of January, medicines used in hospitals for COVID-19, such as respiratory treatments, sedatives, and pain relievers, have increased by 100% to 700%.