The diabetes drug Ozempic is back on Australian shelves.
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About 1.9 million Australians live with diabetes and the global shortage of Ozempic, a low cost weekly injectable medicine, had caused distress for diabetics who had been forced to turn to more expensive and less convenient options.
The shortage had been driven by an unexpected uptake in people using Ozempic for weight loss, after it was touted on social media as a miracle weight loss drug.
Ozempic works by reducing hunger and promoting feelings of fullness by slowing digestion.
Diabetes patients suffering
Sixty-seven year old receptionist Ann Cunningham has type two diabetes and was hospitalised after she went without medication for a month.
"I just didn't take anything for about four weeks. I kept trying to get through to my specialist, which was hard to do, just to ask what am I meant to do in the meantime?," she said.
"And then in those four weeks I suddenly got really sick. I got blurred vision. I thought my diabetes wasn't very severe, because I have managed it well. But not having that injection was terrible, I ended up in hospital, not that they could do much."
Ms Cunningham turned to a daily injectable alternative that set her back $400.
"This other medication is really hard, because it's daily, its really bad. You get a rash and a bruise where you're injecting yourself. So I'm hoping to get back on the Ozempic," she said.
The PBS lists the cost for one pack of Ozempic at $30.
Diabetes Australia spokesperson Professor Sof Andrikopoulos told ACM that it had been a stressful period for medical staff and patients.
"It's been a very stressful period for everybody concerned, for the person who has diabetes, for the health professionals trying to help patients, and then for the pharmacists as well, who are being harassed, or being sort of constantly asked where is it? How can I get a supply? What's going on? When will we get back?," he said.
At the height of the global Ozempic shortage, scams had proliferated targeting desperate consumers, claiming to be selling products containing semaglutide, the generic name for Ozempic.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration requested the removal of almost 1000 advertisements of Ozempic from digital platforms including social media and websites.
"Now that Ozempic is back on the market, what happens now?
"How do we now switch people back to Ozempic? It's not that simple. You can't start taking it the next day, there is a familiarization period to make sure that you can deal with the gastrointestinal effects," Professor Andrikopoulos said.
Lessons learnt from the shortage
Rural Doctors Association spokesperson Dr Ian Kamerman told ACM the experience of guiding his patients in the Tamworth region in NSW through the shortage of Ozempic had illuminated the weaknesses in Australia's medication importation system.
"In this day and age, you wouldn't expect it to happen. But it's part of being a country that is very much at the end of a supply chain and doesn't manufacture a whole lot of drugs locally," he said.
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Professor Andrikopolous said the shortage had been a learning curve for the medical community.
"I don't think that we actually appreciated the uptake and underestimated the power of social media to actually promote people going to their health professional to ask for it," he said.
"We knew that there was a large appetite for people utilizing these drugs. I think we always thought that the supply would keep up with demand. But we didn't actually anticipate that we would get to the point where there would be no product."
Ozempic is not the only drug in short supply. Warfarin, a drug used to prevent blood clotting, is expected to be in short supply until July.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration's (TGA) medicine shortage database reports all three available warfarin dosages are "emergency supply only" due to "manufacturing issues".
