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Children's antibiotics, some adult medications now caught in GTA drug shortages

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Facing a wave of parents desperate for children’s medications, pharmacists are rationing some drugs in short supply and trying novel mixing methods to supply others as more medications appear to be caught in a nationwide shortage.

This has some pharmacists calling for increased masking to reduce the wave of influenza, RSV and COVID-19 currently swamping paediatric emergency rooms and prompting others to call for a permanent solution of creating a Canadian supply of some drugs through new manufacturing.

“Many of the parents are quite desperate,” pharmacist John Girgis of Apple-Hills Medical Pharmacy in Mississauga told CTV News Toronto. “I had a mother this morning with an infant and a toddler – both had slight fevers – and she was just desperate, in tears.”

Girgis said he still has supplies of children’s painkillers but due to the demand he is rationing supplies at one box per family.

Pharmacist Kyro Maseh of Lawlor Pharmasave in Toronto said the main challenge he’s facing is a a shortage of two antibiotics – amoxicillin and azithromycin.

“The paediatric formulations are on backorder,” he said. “For us to compound these two is something that most pharmacists have never done before and we’ve never needed to.”

“Our hands are tied. They are difficult to manipulate. The dosing is extremely delicate when we are dosing a child, especially kids under two,” Maseh said.

Maseh called for increased masking in order to slow the spread of infections that are already putting children’s emergency rooms under strain.

“We need to take more active measures to prevent infections. Masking is crucial, especially in schools and in any setting where there are kids at this point. If we’re able to decrease the infection just a little bit so we can slow down the situation, I’ll take it,” he said.

Hundreds of medications across the country are either running low or entirely depleted, including children’s painkillers, cough and cold medication – and now, antibiotics.

Health Canada said it has sourced a foreign supply of children’s acetaminophen and will distribute them to pharmacists soon.

But that is only a small part of the problem, Jen Belcher of the Ontario Pharmacists Association said.

“We’ve been having to work with parents and prescribers using adult products and adapting them for children’s use. Or switching to alternative antibiotics,” she said.

“It’s definitely a concern if we can’t use the appropriate antibiotics,” she said, warning that could lead to longer term problems like antibiotic resistance.

Canada should not be in a position where it is relying on outside sources for essential medications, Maseh said.

“I think moving forward Canada should be manufacturing these at home in excess so that if we get a spike like this we’re able to deal with it better,” he said.

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