THE Malaysian Medical Association has advised the public against panic buying medicines as there has been a shortage of certain medicines in the market recently, its president Dr Koh Kar Chai said. 

“An advice to the public is not to panic buy and unnecessarily hoard medications which are not immediately needed, to avoid aggravating the situation,” he said in a statement. 

However, he did not specify the types of medicines that are in shortage.

Koh said the shortage is caused by the resumption of economic activities coupled with unprecedented demand for common medications at the height of the Omicron wave. 

He said this had caught many pharmaceutical firms, manufacturers and distributors alike, off-guard.

“The industry responded by placing higher orders for products from manufacturers overseas,” he said.  

“In the case of local manufacturers, they scrambled to increase their manufacturing capacities which are, however, also dependent on raw materials sourced from other countries,” he said. 

Koh said this is a global supply-chain problem, as imports of both the finished products as well as raw materials have been affected.

He said local manufacturers are limited by their capacity to ramp up production. 

“It is not a simple matter of increasing production just to address the shortfall of supplies in the market.

“Raw materials aside, manufacturing plants are built to certain specifications, which may not allow any sudden and massive increase in the rate of production,” he said. 

Koh said MMA hopes for a correction in the supply-and-demand situation of pharmaceuticals in the Malaysian market soon. 

He warned that if uncorrected, even the supply of other previously unaffected medications will be disrupted.

Malaysian pharmaceutical goods rely substantially on imported active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and pharmaceutical intermediates, Malaysian Association of Pharmaceutical Suppliers (Maps) executive director Dr Choe Tong Seng told CodeBlue yesterday. 

China is the largest provider of APIs and pharmaceutical intermediates in the world. Pharmaceutical intermediates are the chemical compounds that form the building blocks of APIs.

According to Choe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in skyrocketing oil prices and increased shipping costs, interrupting supply of certain medicinal compounds produced from petrol.

Malaysia is severely affected as it is dependent on the global supply of APIs and finished products, he said. – June 2, 2022.