The South African Society of Psychiatrists has expressed frustration over psychotropic drug shortages affecting the public health sector.
The South African Society of Psychiatrists (SASOP) has sounded the alarm about psychotropic drug shortages affecting several public hospitals across the country.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the organisation said it had received reports from its members in recent months about shortages of essential medications in the public health sector.
SASOP said the shortages seem to be affecting the whole country, but most reports came from Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape.
The organisation said the shortage is affecting all mental disorders, but was particularly concerned that the medication shortages affected the treatment of severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. Some doctors have tried to use drug substitutes, but those medications are at risk of running out soon.
SASOP was also concerned that at some public hospitals, psychiatrists were barred from issuing private prescriptions to allow families to purchase medication at privately owned pharmacies.
Dr Mvuyiso Talatala, Past-President of SASOP, told IOL that he believed the refusal stemmed from concerns that families may alert the public to the shortage by posting prescriptions online.
SASOP calls for answers on medicine shortages
Talatala also said they had not received concrete explanations on what has caused the psychotropic drug shortage from the Department of Health and other health bodies.
“The explanations range from pharmacists in facilities not ordering on time [to] the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority having closed some pharmaceutical manufacturing plants due to the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz,” said Talatala.
He said the explanations were insufficient to explain why so many medications made by a variety of pharmaceutical companies and treating different mental disorders were running out at the same time.
Tatalala added that the Strait of Hormuz explanation did not make sense because the drugs were manufactured in South Africa, with some ingredients coming from countries not affected by the blockade, like India.
“Oil, the product that depends on the Strait of Hormuz, has not yet run out, but psychiatric drugs have. Isn’t it strange?” Tatalala questioned the explanation.
How the psychotropic drug shortage affects patients
SASOP said the shortage has had a devastating impact on patients, health facilities and communities. Tatalala said patients are at risk of relapsing, which can be harmful to the patients’ overall health, making it more difficult for them to be treated.
“When patients relapse, there is increased utilisation of hospital beds that are already a scarce resource. Patients are then left waiting for beds in emergency departments of hospitals for hours to even days, “ said Tatalala.
He added that this creates a burden on the emergency departments because those nurses are not equipped to handle mentally ill patients, which also leads to the violation of human rights.
Tatalala urged the Department of Health to investigate the cause of the shortage for the sake of patients’ lives.
IOL reached out to the Department of Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi’s office for an explanation of the shortage and the department’s plan to fix the situation, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.