Sir, - Like many thousands of Irish people, I have high blood pressure. My GP has prescribed the use of small amounts of aspirin daily. Six months ago, I was able to purchase from my local pharmacy generic aspirin. A generic drug is one that has no brand name and is sold at a much lower price than the branded drugs.
About four months ago, I was told by my pharmacist that generic aspirin was not to be had, but various other types were available. I chose to use Bayer aspirin, although it was difficult to remove the tablets from the bubble pack. Two months ago, I was informed that the Bayer aspirin wasn't available. Upon questioning, I was told this was because of an EU directive indicating that aspirin was being misused by children and should be withdrawn from the market.
As this didn't make much sense, I decided to dig a bit deeper. I contacted the EU office and was told that there was no such directive from Brussels. This type of matter is handled locally. They suggested it might have come from the Irish Medicines Board.
I contacted the Irish Medicines Board and the doctor I spoke to said she had no knowledge of any restriction on the use of generic aspirin. In fact, she said, generic aspirin should be available at a local supermarket.
My local pharmacist has tried repeatedly to obtain a supply of the generic aspirin, but to no avail. What was becoming obvious was that generic aspirin retails for approximately £1 for 100 tablets and the branded aspirin compounds sell for two to five times this amount. I decided to contact the Bayer people and was told they are not now shipping aspirin to either the UK or to Ireland. The reason given was that there was no market for the product. It has become obvious that someone is preventing the supply of the less expensive generic aspirin from coming in to the country.
The UK government is investigating price-fixing of pharmaceutical products and as a result the pharmaceutical manufacturers have ceased their price-fixing activities. Perhaps some investigation should be done here. It is easy to see that the drug wholesalers, which import the medicines and distribute them in Ireland, are behind this problem. If the manufacturers can ship their products to Ireland and the pharmacists want to stock them, it becomes obvious that it is the middle-men who are blocking the supply of generic medicines in order to increase their profits by cutting off the supply of the much less expensive items. - Yours, etc.,
D.E. MacMillan, Galway.