[News Today] Drug shortages endanger patients

[LEAD]
From diabetes treatments to common antibiotics, drug shortages are spreading across South Korea's medical field.

Over 280 shortages have been reported just last year alone. Here's why.

[REPORT]
This woman raising two children with type 1 diabetes has more things to worry about lately.

That's because it has become more difficult to get insulin needed for type 1 diabetes patients.

To make matters worse, it's become impossible to buy the injectable medications and sprays for hypoglycemia which quickly raise blood sugar levels.

Lee 00 / Mother of diabetes patients (VOICE MODIFIED)
When hypoglycemia occurs, there are no drugs for that at home, so we will have to go to the emergency room. There was even a time when insulin wasn't available.

This pharmacy constantly checks the inventory of about twenty drugs ever since some patients were turned back because it didn't have the prescribed drugs.

Lee Hye-jeong / Korean Pharmaceutical Association
This antibiotic is shipped to Korea too intermittently. Oftentimes, it wasn't available when pharmacists needed to use it.

Supplies of commonly used antibiotics as well as some anticancer drugs, pain-killing injections, and hemostatics were cut recently.

This is because Korea depends on imports for more than 70% of its raw material drugs.

China and India account for most of the raw ingredient supplies, but toughened local regulations have caused the costs to spike.

Subsequently, pharmaceutical companies reduced their production to cut costs, resulting in unstable drug supplies.

Patients will become hopeless if foreign pharmaceutical companies cut off the supply.

Kim Do-wan / Anesthesiology and pain medicine specialist
When drugs become suddenly unavailable, it will be the patients who suffer the most. They have little time to prepare.

To ensure a steady supply of drugs, Korea should build more public production facilities and increase the proportion of locally produced medicines to boost the nation's drug self-sufficiency.

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