Contents
A sigh of relief for methadone patients: a Swiss pharmaceutical company can produce methadone capsules on a large scale.
For all those who depend on methadone tablets, it came as a shock at the beginning of January: the operating license of the only manufacturing company in Switzerland was suspended. Since then there has been a shortage of methadone tablets.
Addiction doctor Thilo Beck can now give the all-clear: The Streuli company can produce methadone capsules on a large scale using a so-called extemporaneous prescription from a pharmacy. This means that a pharmacy passes the order on to Streuli.
The pharmaceutical company writes at the request of Radio SRF: «Preparations for the emergency production of high-dose methadone are in full swing. As soon as we receive the material expected over the course of the next week, we will start production.» After that, various quality assurance analyzes would have to be carried out before market release and delivery can take place. “Our goal remains the same, to be able to close the sensitive gap in supply from the end of February.”
“Anything else would have been a disaster”
Thilo Beck is relieved. In Switzerland, around 9,000 people are in a methadone replacement program. Most of them take the preparation in tablet form. Liquid methadone would not have been a solution for her, says Beck. These people do not tolerate liquid methadone very well. “If this solution with Streuli had not existed, it would have been a shock in the lives of these patients. They would probably have gotten the stuff back on the street, would have drifted back into illegality.”
The Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products, Swissmedic, also confirms the solution with Streuli.
Assumption of costs still unclear
Capsule production is expensive. And therefore also expensive. The Swiss Society for Addiction Medicine is hoping for goodwill from the insurance companies, as Beck says: “We very much hope that the health insurance companies will take over these tariffs without any problems.”
Legend:
IMAGO / epd
In the longer term, people are looking for a manufacturer who can produce tablets and not capsules, says Beck. We are in talks with various companies at home and abroad.
Operating license revoked
So far, it was the Amino company in the canton of Aargau that manufactured the tablets. It has not had an operating license since the beginning of December. The Swiss therapeutic products institute Swissmedic has withdrawn them from the company, and the Federal Supreme Court has confirmed this decision. Swissmedic bases the decision on an inspection and a house search. Inconsistencies came to light. “These are not trivial cases, they are negligence that can no longer be tolerated,” Lukas Jaggi, spokesman for Swissmedic, told SRF in early January.