Amid frenzied hoarding and emptied shelves, a small family-owned pharmacy in Sydney has worked with its competitors to ensure those most at risk could get the items they need.
Like many pharmacies, the Abbotsford Family Pharmacy in the city’s inner-west is working hard to meet the extraordinary demand brought by the coronavirus pandemic.
Stocks of Ventolin, face masks, thermometers, painkillers, hand sanitisers and vitamins are under significant strain.
The rush has put the pharmacy’s most at-risk and vulnerable customers – the elderly and the immunocompromised – in a precarious position.
Abbotsford’s pharmacist Silvana Gittani and her staff compiled a list of their most vulnerable customers.
Each staff member was allocated a name to call daily and check in to ensure they had what they needed.
“This is because we know our customers,” Gittani explains. “The supermarkets can’t do this.”
“I wanted people to think ‘this pharmacy has brought us together, not split us apart’.”
The team are also coordinating with competing pharmacies to share stock and use a Facebook group as a central point of communication to ensure at-risk customers have what they need.
If Ventolin isn’t available, for example, a callout will be made to other pharmacists in the Facebook group.
Customers are then linked up with whichever pharmacy has what they need, and drop-offs are organised.
“I think it’s really going to bring the community together instead of isolating them,” Gittani says. “It’s really, really remarkable.”
Experts are continuing to warn against panic-buying from pharmacies, and say there is no national shortage of medication.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia said there is “bound to be some shortages” in some areas due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Spokesman Greg Turnbull said there was high stress on supply chains and pharmacies were attempting to re-stock after consumer panic buying.
“We’re not aware of any drug that is out of stock because of Covid-19, but certainly the supply chain is at maximum capacity at the moment.
“I’ll give you an example I heard from one wholesaler. Normally, when the truck leaves the distribution centre … it is heading out to service eight to nine pharmacies. Now it is heading out to service two to three because they are ordering so much.”
He said prescription medicines were not as affected, because pharmacies were constrained by law and professional requirement in how they could be sold.
Turnbull said it appeared that wholesalers were trying to put a cap on large orders to avoid stockpiling.
“But the pharmacies will tell you we’re not stockpiling we’re ordering in what we need to meet the demand,” he said.
Last week, the Guardian and the Medical Republic, a specialist news outlet, revealed at least three major drug wholesalers have written to pharmacists warning of unprecedented demands for stock and apologising for supply chain challenges.
The problems were particularly acute for pharmacies in rural areas.
In one case, a drug wholesaler said that demand for over-the-counter and prescription drugs was 30-40% higher than the company’s forecasts, which had already been adjusted to account for coronavirus.
