“The other cause is supply chain breaks,” said Hubmann. The active ingredients are now mainly manufactured in the Far East, especially in China and India. If factories are closed there because of Corona or freighters are no longer allowed to call at the ports, even those finished medicines that are manufactured in Europe will ultimately be missing from the shelves of local pharmacies. Sometimes supplies could also not be used due to contamination.
“That’s why we’ve been demanding for a long time that the active ingredient production must take place in Europe again,” emphasized Hubmann. Politicians urgently need to create the conditions for this. But even if approval procedures were to go through more quickly, cost pressure was reduced and production in Europe became more profitable again – “that won’t happen overnight”. Hubmann said it would take at least five to ten years for the appropriate structures to be set up.