Agents for chemotherapy increasingly unavailable; Dutch hospitals concerned
Hospitals in the Netherlands are increasingly concerned about the availability of various types of agents that form the basis of chemotherapy, the WNL television program Stand van Nederland: Wereld op Scherp reported. Hospitals throughout the country experienced shortages of oncolytic agents at least once in the past year. Some had to prescribe less effective treatments for a small group of patients.
The program spoke to the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital in Amsterdam, the Isala Hospital in Zwolle, the Jeroen Bosch Hospital in Den Bosch, Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), and Maastricht UMC.
The Dutch hospitals had a serious shortage of etoposide, widely used to treat lung cancer, last summer, UMCG pulmonologist Anthonie van der Wekken told the program. “We had to choose which patients we could treat. For other patients, a new treatment plan had to be drawn up with agents that are less effective.”
Dutch hospitals also struggled to get hold of vincristine and methotrexate, oncolytics used to make chemotherapy for lymphoma, testicular cancer, and lung cancer, among others. The hospitals stressed that they’ve managed to largely solve the shortages among themselves by sharing supplies, but worry about how long they can keep it up.
“It is something we are concerned about,” a spokesperson for the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital, known as the Netherlands’ cancer institute, told the program. “Classic chemotherapy is still the most effective treatment for many cancer patients. But they are no longer produced in the Netherlands or the European Union.”
According to the spokesperson, the Netherlands is about 80 percent dependent on raw materials and medicines from China and India when it comes to the production of generic medicines like paracetamol, antibiotics, and some chemotherapy treatments. “Because of this dependency, we assume that shortages will occur more often and that it will not be solved just like that.”
At the end of February, the Medicines Evaluation Board again received a report of potential shortages for etoposide and methotrexate. A similar report for vincristine was made in January. Reports of delivery problems with oncolytic agents increased from 180 in 2022 to 262 in 2023 and 286 last year.
