People with schizophrenia struggling to find medication amid nationwide quetiapine shortage

ABC NEWS (Australia)

There is a nationwide shortage of some forms of a medication that people who live with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder rely on. Pharmacists have been struggling to get supplies of the 25-milligram version of quetiapine.

Transcript

00:00Art is a part of everyday life for Heidi Everett, and so is taking quetiapine.

00:08On New Year's Eve she needed to refill her prescription.

00:11I went around five chemists in my local area, they were all out.

00:15The drug, also sold as Seroquel, is relied on by people who live with schizophrenia and

00:20bipolar.

00:21Last year it took only two weeks without the medication for Heidi to end up in hospital.

00:26I was crying in the chemist because I'm terrified of what happens if I don't take my meds.

00:32We've had people calling dozens of pharmacies trying to source the medication that they

00:37desperately need.

00:38The Therapeutic Goods Administration says two brands of quetiapine 25mg are unavailable

00:44in Australia, and there's limited availability of another 25mg brand and one 300mg version.

00:52People could have acute psychotic episodes if they weren't able to access this medication.

00:56The TGA says as a workaround, higher strengths can be halved or quartered to obtain a 25mg dose.

01:03I'll show you what it's like having to cut one of these.

01:06But splitting tablets is not easy.

01:08It's no guarantee that the tablets are exactly the same size.

01:12Medicine shortages have been an ongoing global issue since the pandemic.

01:16To protect patients, in July 2023 the Department of Health introduced minimum stockholding

01:22requirements of some critical medications.

01:25There are seven brands of quetiapine 25mg on the list, meaning the pharmaceutical companies

01:31are required to hold a supply of four months of the drug.

01:35Now the Department of Health has told the ABC they can't let us know whether those obligations

01:39have been breached because that information is subject to secrecy provisions.

01:44This is perhaps one of a number of medications that we're not keeping enough of onshore.

01:50The TGA says it expects all 25mg tablets to be available again by late February, but

01:56some 300mg tablets will remain in short supply until June.

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