Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on medicine supply chain for patients with chronic diseases: Experiences of the community pharmacists

Ramakrishnan, Manasvini; Poojari, Pooja Gopal; Rashid, Muhammed; Nair, Sreekumaran; Chandran, Vijay; Thunga, Girish

doi:10.1016/j.cegh.2023.101243

Cited by 16 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The COVID-19 pandemic was believed to impair the supply chain. The phenomenon of patients panic buying or stockpiling medicines aligns with the ndings of studies in Pakistan and India [7,17]. Additionally, this study highlights that disruptive situations such as civil unrest and ooding were perceived to exacerbate supply chain issues.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

“…From the mitigation strategies used, contacting other pharmacies via group messaging applications mirrors previous ndings [8,12,15]. In addition to the generic, therapeutic and originator brand medicine substitution mentioned by previous researchers, this study highlights dispensing different dosage forms or splitting xed-dose combinations into individual medicines [15][16][17]. The strategy of keeping bulk stock was perceived to restrict cash ow, similar to the ndings of Tan et al [16].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

“…A recent study in India explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the medicine supply chain at community pharmacies [17]. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique circumstance whereby the supply chain was constrained globally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Community Pharmacists’ Perceptions and Experiences of Medicine Shortages in Disruptive Situations: A Qualitative Study

Bachoolall,

Suleman

2024

Preprint

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Background: Medicine shortages are a challenge in upper, lower and middle-income countries, including South Africa. In recent years, community pharmacists in Durban, South Africa, have experienced disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, flooding, civil unrest and electricity disruptions. Little is known about the impact of these disruptive situations on medicine shortages in community pharmacies. Aim: Exploring the perceptions of community pharmacists and their experiences with medicine shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptive situations. Method: Convenience and snowball sampling were used to recruit community pharmacists in Durban, South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in person or via an online video conferencing platform. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were analysed thematically on NVivo 14 software, using the Framework Method. Results:A total of 15 community pharmacists were interviewed. Five major themes emerged from thematic analysis, viz. the perceptions of medicine shortages, the impact of disruptive situations, the consequences of medicine shortages, mitigation strategies; and further suggestions and resources. Perceptions were that shortages were exacerbated by the disruptive situations. Participants perceived a negative financial impact on patients and pharmacies, with out-of-pocket costs affecting the former and loss of income affecting the latter. The mitigation strategies used were contacting stakeholders, medicine substitution and stock management. Conclusion: Community pharmacists felt that medicine shortages required improved communication, collaboration, policies, notification systems and guidelines to mitigate the problem further.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

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Community Pharmacists’ Perceptions and Experiences of Medicine Shortages in Disruptive Situations: A Qualitative Study

Bachoolall,

Suleman

2024

Preprint

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“…There was a lack of drug supply, drug distribution, and drug delivery during this period. The lack of human resources caused an increase in the workload of employees 54 . In an interview conducted with pharmacists in 16 European countries, they showed local pharmacies faced a shortage of human resources 55 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors disrupting the continuity of care for patients with chronic disease during the pandemics: A systematic review

Ghanbari‐Jahromi,

Kharazmi,

Bastani

et al. 2024

Health Science Reports

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Background and AimsContinuous routine care is necessary to prevent long‐term complications of chronic diseases and improve patients' health conditions. This review study was conducted to determine the factors disrupting continuity of care for patients with chronic diseases during the pandemic.MethodsAll original articles published on factors disrupting continuity of care for patients with chronic disease during a pandemic between December 2019 and June 28, 2023, in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and ProQuest databases were searched. Selection of articles, data extraction, and qualitative evaluation of articles (through STROBE and COREQ checklist) were done by two researchers separately. Data graphing form was used to extract the data of each study and then the data were classified by thematic analysis method.ResultsOut of 1708 articles reviewed from the databases, 22 were included. The factors disrupting the continuity of care for patients with chronic diseases during the epidemics were classified into two main categories: patient‐side factors and health system‐side factors. Patient‐side factors including psychological, individual and social, disease‐related, and health system‐side factors including provider access, health system institutional, and infrastructural and financial problems were among the subcategories disrupting the continuity of care for patients with chronic diseases during the pandemic. Based on the studies, psychological factors and access to the provider were among the most frequent factors affecting the continuity of care for patients with chronic diseases in the pandemic.ConclusionConsidering the factors disrupting the continuity of care and applying appropriate interventions based on them, can guarantee the continuity of providing services to chronic patients in health crises.

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“…The outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019, which later developed into a pandemic, has rearranged the healthcare systems, dramatically remodeling and negatively impacting access to outpatient and inpatient care delivered in various medical fields. [1][2][3] The pandemic had a particular impact on the organization of infectious diseases departments and the scope of duties of infectious disease specialists, which in practice were limited to the care of patients with COVID-19.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The burden of infectious diseases throughout and after the COVID‐19 pandemic (2020–2023) and Russo‐Ukrainian war migration

Rzymski,

Zarębska‐Michaluk,

Parczewski

et al. 2024

Journal of Medical Virology

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Understanding how the infectious disease burden was affected throughout the COVID‐19 pandemic is pivotal to identifying potential hot spots and guiding future mitigation measures. Therefore, our study aimed to analyze the changes in the rate of new cases of Poland's most frequent infectious diseases during the entire COVID‐19 pandemic and after the influx of war refugees from Ukraine. We performed a registry‐based population‐wide study in Poland to analyze the changes in the rate of 24 infectious disease cases from 2020 to 2023 and compared them to the prepandemic period (2016–2019). Data were collected from publicly archived datasets of the Epimeld database published by national epidemiological authority institutions. The rate of most of the studied diseases (66.6%) revealed significantly negative correlations with the rate of SARS‐CoV‐2 infections. For the majority of infectious diseases, it substantially decreased in 2020 (in case of 83%) and 2021 (63%), following which it mostly rebounded to the prepandemic levels and, in some cases, exceeded them in 2023 when the exceptionally high annual rates of new cases of scarlet fever, Streptococcus pneumoniae infections, HIV infections, syphilis, gonococcal infections, and tick‐borne encephalitis were noted. The rate of Clostridioides difficile enterocolitis was two‐fold higher than before the pandemic from 2021 onward. The rate of Legionnaires’ disease in 2023 also exceeded the prepandemic threshold, although this was due to a local outbreak unrelated to lifted COVID‐19 pandemic restrictions or migration of war refugees. The influx of war migrants from Ukraine could impact the epidemiology of sexually transmitted diseases. The present analysis indicates that continued efforts are needed to prevent COVID‐19 from overwhelming healthcare systems again and decreasing the control over the burden of other infectious diseases. It also identifies the potential tipping points that require additional mitigation measures, which are also discussed in the paper, to avoid escalation in the future.

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Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on medicine supply chain for patients with chronic diseases: Experiences of the community pharmacists

Cited by 16 publications

References 11 publications

Community Pharmacists’ Perceptions and Experiences of Medicine Shortages in Disruptive Situations: A Qualitative Study

Community Pharmacists’ Perceptions and Experiences of Medicine Shortages in Disruptive Situations: A Qualitative Study

Factors disrupting the continuity of care for patients with chronic disease during the pandemics: A systematic review

The burden of infectious diseases throughout and after the COVID‐19 pandemic (2020–2023) and Russo‐Ukrainian war migration

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