RACGP chair Mark Morgan calls on federal government to incentivise onshore IV manufacturing industry as medicine cost soars 10 fold in national shortage crisis

Description

A top medico has urged the federal government to incentivise a local manufacturing industry for critical medical supplies as the cost of imported IV soars 10 fold in a shortage...

Mr Morgan told the publication ­incentivising manufacturing onshore could mean the nation has guaranteed access to core medical supplies, reducing the enormous pressure on hospitals.

“It might not be as profitable for a company to manufacture medical supplies in Australia but Australia does need to have a guaranteed access to a core set of supplies and that might mean ­incentivising manufacturing onshore,” he said.

“Australia needs the capacity to manufacture essentials onshore, even if this means using taxpayers’ money to build incentives. Australia should take a disaster planning approach to essential supplies.

“A planned, responsive, staged alerting system for supplies that might become shortages, and then do become shortages, I think a lot can be learnt from the disaster planning we have in this country and the same should happen for medical supplies.”

Subject

Medicine Shortages