You are here

National Shortage of Imatinib?

Health Care at Home delivered 7 days worth of imatininb yesterday, instead of the 3 month supply on the prescription. They said they have supply problems.

Today, the Pharmacy at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital where my wife is treated, phoned to say there is a national shortage of imatininb.

Has anyone else got this problem? What is going on?

...and we haven't yet even reached the possible problems of a hard Brexit if that were to happen.

It is bad enough being ill (and coping well with it) without this kind of truly worrying problem.

I picked up 6 months supply from Preston yesterday.

Pharmacy at Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital pharmacy phoned today to say that the problem is in relation to 100mg imatinib tablets, so it affects anyone on 200 or 300 mg per day. The NHS supplier has gone out of business and a re-tender is necessary - so this is not a quick fix. He said 400mg tablet supply should be unaffected.

My wife takes 200mg per day. The pharmacist has suggested breaking 400mg tablets in half but I seem to recall that is inadvisable - can anyone help with that point? 

I remember reading that you shouldn’t break them, in the patient leaflet. All the same, they also suggest to dissolve the tablet to a drinkable form if there’s trouble swallowing so it doesn’t instinctively feel like an awful thing to do.

I wonder how long the unused broken half would take to “go off” since the coating would be broken?

David.

I take the Apotex brand generic. It is an oval pill with a break line. No problem to split, been doing it for a year now with no issues.

Many thanks for all your replies.

The problem may be linked to the possibility of a no deal Brexit, see here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46597425

Hi David

I had a H@H delivery of imatinib 100mgs yesterday evening and they sent me enough for 10 days at 300mgs per say. I had phoned them earlier, after seeing your post and was assured I would be getting the full month's supply - sadly not. They also confirmed there is a shortage of the tablets.

I wonder what will happen now?

 

best

Chrissie from Mid Devon

It is never a supply or shortage problem, it is always a money problem.  

 

It costs a little over $100 US to produce an entire years supply of the medicine.  The medicine can be produced anywhere by any chemist.  

 

Now, for the national money problem, what you might consider doing is taking your medicine every other day to extend the supply.  This should be safe if you are at MMR or lower level, any higher is a bit risky but probably acceptable.  

 

Hope your government gets their money and trade issues straightened out soon.

If anybody is running low i have 200 x100mg of generic Imatinib I don't need.  I stopped taking them last year as i'm going for TFR.