At a drug wholesaler warehoapply in Belgium, shelves are emptier than they applyd to be.
Like other EU nations, Belgium has increasingly experienced medicine shortages that vex pharmacists, exasperate patients and risk overloading public health services.
“There are often several dozen medications that are in short supply simultaneously, which creates our lives very difficult,” stated Didier Ronsyn, a Brussels pharmacist.
An EU audit last month found shortages were a “chronic headache” across the bloc.
Its 27 states reported running critically short of 136 drugs, including antibiotics and medicines applyd to treat heart attacks, between 2022 and 2024, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) stated.
Belgium reported the most cases, with more than a dozen critical instances — meaning no alternatives are available — notified to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2024 only.
The caapply partially lies in supply chain snags and Europe’s over-reliance on Asia for key drug components, the ECA stated.
Cheaper prices mean that Asian producers now supply the EU with 70 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients it necessarys, according to a study cited in the ECA report.
The depfinishency is particularly acute for painkillers, like paracetamol or ibuprofen, and drugs that ran critically low in recent years, including some antibiotics and salbutamol, an asthma drug sold under the brand name Ventolin.
Yet, EU internal market inefficiencies are also to blame.
Drug prices differ within the bloc as national authorities neobtainediate individually with producers, explained Olivier Delaere, CEO of Febelco, a wholesale distributor that serves about 40 percent of Belgian pharmacies.
As a consequence, manufacturers tfinish to deliver more to countries that pay more, and just enough to those who drove a harder bargain — to avoid drugs being re-exported for profit, he stated.
Additionally, the ECA stated that most medicines are still authorised at national level and packages differ significantly among countries, which creates internal EU trade “more costly and complex”.
This caapplys so-called “local shortages”, when a product is not available in one EU counattempt but can be found just across the border in another member state, stated Delaere of Febelco.
“It’s a growing problem,” he stated, as a massive automated dispenser stacked with medicine boxes filled green bquestionets — each corresponding to a pharmacist’s order — on a conveyor belt in the warehoapply behind him.
Some 70 percent of the about one million client calls the firm receives a year “are focapplyd solely on medicine shortages”, Delaere stated. “It is an absolutely colossal workload and energy drain.”
In 2024, EU pharmacists spent on average 11 hours per week managing shortages, according to PGEU, a pharmacists’ trade group.
Ronsyn stated he often spfinishs an hour a day “creating phone calls, checking information, sfinishing patients away, or calling them back to notify them their medication has arrived or in certain cases, that it hasn’t” — something that did not happen in the past.
“It’s also tough for the patient, who might panic a little when they don’t receive their medication on time,” he stated.
Brussels has been scrambling to find solutions.
In March, the European Commission proposed a “critical medicines act” aimed at boosting manufacturing in the EU by providing incentives and urging member states to shift away from price as the key criterion for awarding procurement contracts.
It was followed in July by a “stockpiling strategy” to coordinate stocks and ensure medicines and other goods are available in case of crisis.
A commission spokeswoman stated Brussels was confident that these and other recently introduced proposals “will create a substantial difference” and “significantly support tackling the problem”.
The bills are currently being neobtainediated with the European Parliament and member states, a sometimes lengthy process.
“They are attempting to find solutions, but it is always very slow,” stated Ronsyn, whose pharmacy overviews the commission offices. “We will probably receive there someday, but for now it’s complicated.”
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