The pandemic taught us nothing about critical medical supplies

By Peter Roberts

Apparently we learned nothing from the pandemic shortages of critical medical supplies such as surgical gloves and hospital masks.

For all the talk about building sovereign local manufacturing sources of medical necessities, Australia is faced with a similar situation of shortage only a few years later, but this time over IV fluids.

I hardly need to tell you that IV fluids are essential for treating patients undergoing operations and other medical emergencies, as well as long term care such as intensive care.

Yet in the face of a worldwide shortage Australia has again been shown to have insufficient manufacturing capacity to meet our basic needs.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration put it in writing on Friday: “We are aware of shortages of multiple intravenous (IV) fluid products from all three Australian suppliers – Baxter Healthcare, B.Braun, and Fresenius Kabi.

“…The shortage is particularly affecting multiple bag sizes of Sodium Chloride 0.9% (saline) and Compound Sodium Lactate (Hartmann’s solution) products.”

Yes, alas, Australia’s national self-insufficiency runs the gamut from toilet paper to masks to salty water suitable for fluid replacement, resuscitation, and administering medications directly into the bloodstream.

The TGA blames multiple factors ‘including global supply limitations, unexpected increases in demand, and manufacturing issues’.

To improve supply, the TGA has approved the import of multiple overseas-registered alternative saline fluids

TGA, the regulator of course says regulation is not to blame: “We continue to collaborate with jurisdiction health departments, and suppliers of Australian-registered IV fluid products to monitor the situation and address any regulatory barriers to supply.

“: (however) Suppliers have advised us that supply will continue to be constrained throughout 2024.”

One would have hoped that the pandemic caused us in the very least to take stock of those truly critical items that we absolutely needed to be able to make onshore sufficient for our needs.

But did that happen? Was there a sort of national stocktake? Apparently not.

We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on submarines to secure our critical import supply chains in case of future threat.

Yet getting the economic settings right – including providing assistance to local manufacturers to have sufficient excess capacity to replace imports – of our critical medical security has escaped our attention.

I could point to other areas where Australia does not have capacity in local manufacturing such as antibiotics, and there must be others, equally worrying.

But for the moment we are still in the buck passing stage.

As the TGA put it: “We work with pharmaceutical companies to communicate information about shortages of their medicines to health professionals and patients.

“However, we cannot compel companies to register, manufacture, or increase supply in Australia.”

We have a future made in Australia which is an advance.

But until we really accept as a nation that manufacturing self sufficiency is the sine qua non of national security and wellbeing, this sort of crisis will continue to present itself.

That means returning industry and technology to be a centrepiece of cabinet government as it was in the Hawke-Keating era, not giving lip service to it and treating it as a junior add-on to policy.

We ended protection and set the country on a wealthier future back then – the challenge to take manufacturing seriously is no less urgent today.

Picture: BBraun.com.au