HRT shortages continue to thwart practitioners

Patients and practitioners alike are facing problems due to the continued shortage of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Many of our readers will have been aware of this issue for some time now, but we seem have reached a point where such issues, which were once mainly a concern for healthcare professionals, have reached the mainstream media (Pym, 2019; Mohdin, 2019).

The shortages of these treatments began in 2018, when China forced some manufactures to stop producing HRT patches. Of course, a result of this, there was an increased demand for other brands (Mohdin, 2019). Practitioners now find themselves in the position of needing to seek alternative treatments. The British Menopause Society (BMS) recommends considering equivalent products to the brands that are currently unavailable and matching their dosage to the original brands (BMS, 2019).

One provider of HRT products, Janssen, released a statement professing that they were ‘acutely aware of how difficult this situation is for those who rely on our products, and… remain deeply sorry for this’. Listed dates of when their medications are currently projected to come back into stock, which sit between August and November (Janssen, 2019). Practitioners looking for a projection on the availability of all the products that are currently in short supply should take a look at the latest BMS press release on the supply shortages (BMS, 2019).