Pharmacies in the city of São Paulo have a shortage of antibiotics

In the period of higher incidence of respiratory diseases in children, pharmacies in the city of São Paulo have registered a lack of children’s antibiotics. The situation has led doctors to seek alternative treatments, with drugs from older versions or used with adults.

THE Sheet consulted, by phone or in person, 26 pharmacies in the capital between last Saturday (30) and Monday (2). In all, there were reports of lack of antibiotics that are used, for example, to treat pneumonia, otitis and tonsillitis. On the website of the main drugstore chains, the medicines are also unavailable.

Doctors and pharmacy attendants say that the stock of this type of medicine was already low in recent months, but the situation worsened with the arrival of autumn and the increase in respiratory diseases in children.

They, however, point out that the rise in respiratory diseases was already expected and that the number of cases is within what was recorded in previous years, before the pandemic. For doctors, the problem lies in the supply of medication.

“The increase in diseases occurred in the last month with the arrival of autumn, but this is normal. What is unusual and never occurred is the lack of medication”, says pediatrician Paulo Telles. He says he has contacted laboratories and drug manufacturers, but has not received a response about the lack of stock.

The pediatrician says that it has been recurrent for families to return to the office to ask for alternative medication after not finding what was prescribed. “Parents call desperately asking if it’s possible to change the medicine, because they run around dozens of pharmacies and they can’t find it.”

He says that in some cases they have prescribed older versions of antibiotics or even adjusted the dose of drugs used with adults to treat children.

“Bacterial infections if not treated quickly can progress to serious conditions. So, I have resorted to a second or third drug option”, he says.

Pediatrician José Martins Filho, professor at Unicamp’s Faculty of Medicine, says he has never seen a generalized lack of medicines like the one that is occurring. “It’s unusual that medicines so common and most in demand at this time of year are missing,” he says.

Last week, Martins Filho prescribed Amoxicillin for a child with pneumonia. Parents go through more than ten pharmacies and only in the last one they found the antibiotic, but only one box, which only guaranteed the treatment for five days. The initial prescription was for ten days.

“They called me to ask for a second prescription so that they could buy the second box. Only after a few days and visiting dozens of pharmacies, they found the medicine”, he says.

According to doctors, the greatest difficulty has been to find antibiotics, generic and similar, for Amoxicillin and Azithromycin.

The attendant of a Drogasil unit in the Vila Diva region, on the east side, told Sheet that for three months, antibiotics for children’s use have been in intermittent supply, but a month ago the situation became critical, with zero stock for generics and the like, including.

The attendant at a Drogaria São Paulo unit in the Tatuapé region, also in the east, said that there is no forecast of the arrival of medicines and that he is advising clients to ask doctors to prescribe another class of medicines, which are still available. in few units.

Thales Araújo de Oliveira, medical manager of the emergency room at Hospital Infantil Sabará, says that many parents have returned to the emergency room after not finding the prescribed antibiotics. Doctors have tried alternative medications, but in some cases, they resort to intravenous or intramuscular administration in the hospital itself.

“We try to change the prescription until the family finds the medicine to buy, but it hasn’t always been possible. Yesterday [segunda-feira, 2], we prescribed four different antibiotics to a child and they found none. We had to admit her to the hospital for treatment,” she says.

Fausto Carvalho, president of the School Health Department of the Society of Pediatrics of São Paulo, says that the lack of medicines also affects cities in the interior of the state and that there are also reports of shortages within hospitals. “It’s a very serious situation. Manufacturers need to clarify why this is happening.”

When contacted, Abrafarma (Brazilian Association of Pharmacy and Drugstore Networks) claims to have not received any information or notification from the networks about widespread shortages of medicines.

In a note, the DPSP group, responsible for the Pacheco and Drogaria São Paulo drugstores, says that the lack of medicines is a “one-off situation resulting from an atypical increase in demand”. He also said that he had reinforced the supply to normalize the situation soon.

THE Sheet contacted Droga Raia and Drogasil, but the companies said they would not comment.

Sindusfarma (Pharmaceutical Products Industry Union) said, in a note, that the lack of medicines may be the result of “possible misalignments of stocks in pharmacies and distributors, eventually caused by the increase in demand for several medicines in recent months”.

The entity says that there is no report from the pharmaceutical industries about problems in the production and distribution of their products.

Despite claiming that there are no production problems, Sindusfarma complains about drug price control, which is carried out by the federal government. According to the entity, some medicines have their authorized selling price at a lower value than the production costs.

“The regulation of drug prices needs to be modernized urgently, to avoid that, in the future, new and more serious problems arise, threatening the manufacture of other medicines essential to the health of the population”, says the note.

Also according to the entity, the industries are “deploying to produce and distribute all the medicines that the population needs” and that any supply problems will be solved “as soon as possible”.