[Reporter's view] Reflecting opinions on cold medicine

on the supply and demand of cold medicine

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has been monitoring the supply and demand of cold medicines since March.

 

The targets for monitoring are NSAIDs and Expectorants such as complex cold medicines, Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, Dexibuprofen, Loxoprofen, and Erdosteine.

 

When pharmaceutical companies computer-report the production (import), sales, and inventory of products to the Drug Safety Country's Weekly Production and Import Status Report system, they have identified cold drugs in circulation and encouraged them to produce insufficient or unproduced items.

 

However, there was a big difference between the results of monitoring the supply and demand status and the distribution of cold medicines felt at the front-line pharmacy site.

 

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said that if there are items that are producing and distributing even a little, they are not "out of stock." It is an opinion that pharmacies cannot have inventory of cold medicines with certain ingredients.

 

In the end, officials from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said they wanted to resolve the supply and demand of cold medicines only with monitoring results, and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety established a quick response system for cold medicines using a small-packed drug supply guide system.

 

The Korean Pharmaceutical Association selects 10 items of cold medicines requested by pharmacies and reports them to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety every week, and when the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety groups the items requested and provides them to the Pharmaceutical Association, the pharmaceutical company enters the system.

 

Although the cold medicine supply and demand monitoring and rapid response system are operating at the same time, the front-line pharmacies still complain that supply and demand are disrupted even if they check inventory in the system and ask wholesalers to supply supplies.

 

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety is also asking for cooperation from individual pharmaceutical companies and wholesalers in connection with pharmaceutical and distribution associations and distributed prescriptions for cold medicine ingredients that are smooth in supply and demand, but they have no significant effect.

 

The operation of such a system has not caused the cold medicine to be sold out, which occurred during the re-proliferation of COVID-19 earlier this year.

 

It is necessary to solve practical problems about the fact that the supply of cold medicines for specific ingredient preparation is not smooth, and pharmacists who have to prepare prescribed Rx are burdened with difficulties.

 

Just as the public mask system was introduced during the mask crisis, the government plans to establish a public supply management system to actively prevent cold medicine from being sold out in the future.

 

It is commendable that the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has been continuously checking the distribution status by monitoring the supply and demand status since March in the wake of the cold medicine sold out earlier this year.

 

However, if they respond only with statistics entered into the system, they will have no choice but to file complaints at the front-line sites.

 

In the future, we look forward to actively preparing countermeasures to prevent the second cold medicine from being sold out by steadily reflecting the opinions of the site.