Antibiotics: For children, doctors even need non-approved juices from abroad

Getting antibiotics for children is also becoming increasingly difficult for clinics in Germany. It is an “alarm signal” if antibiotics or cancer drugs are suddenly no longer available across the board in Germany, said the head of the Germans
Hospital Society (DKG), Gerald Gass, the editorial network Germany (RND/Friday).

Workload for clinics to procure medication “excessive”

The amount of work for the clinics to procure medicines with delivery bottlenecks is already “excessive”, complained Gass. At the same time, he pointed out that individual paediatricians were already referring their little patients to clinics because outpatient treatment with antibiotics was either not possible or only possible with a delay due to the lack of medication. The hospitals could still make up for the shortage with considerable additional effort, but “it will not be possible to solve the problems in the long term,” Gass made clear.

In pharmacies, the lack of antibiotic juices has already resulted in customers who wanted to buy fever juices having to be turned away. The head of the North Rhine pharmacists’ association, Thomas Preis, called for the establishment of a “national reserve of antibiotics” in the “Rheinische Post” on Wednesday.

Federal states are relaxing rules for children’s antibiotic juices

Several federal states have now relaxed the rules for children’s antibiotic juices so that the supply is not jeopardized. This allows the import of non-approved antibiotic juices from abroad. This is possible because the Ministry of Health had officially identified a shortage of antibiotic juices for children the week before. This allows certain rules of the strict drug law to be circumvented for a limited period of time.

A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Health in Berlin referred to the law against drug shortages introduced by the Federal Government. This also provides for an obligation to store certain medicines for several months. However, the law still has to be passed by the Bundestag.