Rotateq, a children’s vaccine that is becoming increasingly scarce in Spanish pharmacies.

Spanish pharmacies notified lack of new medicine on the shelves: Rotatek, children’s vaccine against rotavirus. This adds to the list of drugs with supply problems prepared by the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (Aemps), which currently consists of more than 865 drug presentations, including anti-cancer chemicals.

Rotateq is a vaccine designed to prevent rotavirus, the leading cause of severe gastroenteritis in infants and young children. This disease can cause debilitating episodes of diarrhea, vomiting, fever and dehydration. These doses stimulate the body’s immune system so that it can recognize the virus and fight it effectively. Rotatec is administered in multiple doses during the first months of life and is intended to prevent hospitalization due to acute dose surge.

Until four months ago, the inclusion of this rotavirus injection in the vaccination schedule in Spain was limited. For this reason, it was only offered in some autonomous communities. Between them: Castile and Leon and Galicia. However, the NHS Public Health Commission has decided to expand its scope of work across the country, recognizing the importance it has for little ones. However, health did not include this. motu proprio. He did this at the request of the Spanish Pediatric Association.

In this regard, a tool for searching for missing drugs from the LUDA Partners Pharmacy Network has been registered. more than 700 consultations on this vaccine in just 20 days, which represents a significant increase from the entire previous year, when only 18 searches were conducted. Despite these efforts, Aemps estimates it could take up to two months to restore a normal supply of Rotateq, which poses a challenge for parents seeking it.

These medications are less effective

However, the same medicines agency reported existence of an alternative to Rotateq, called Rotarix, which is cheaper and only works against one type of rotavirus (compared to the first five).

Pharmacies that are part of the LUDA network confirm that Rotarix has seen a slight increase in searches using its tool, although it has not yet reached alarming levels. This circumstance underlines the importance of “this new pharmaceutical service”, which avoids pilgrimage of patients between pharmacies, allowing a professional to point a patient in real time to “the nearest pharmacy that has the product they need,” they indicate from the platform.

Other drugs in short supply

This recent shortage is reminiscent of the one that occurred with the drug. Bexsero in 2016, another childhood vaccine that immunizes infants against meningococcal B. In this case, shortly after being included in the SNS vaccination schedule, it began causing supply problems at pharmacies across the country.

The high demand could not be met and The GSK laboratory assured that the production of Bexsero is “a complex and lengthy process lasting approximately nine months.”

This fact has led to long waiting lists with thousands of people seeking the vaccine because, as the media reported, “The doses arrived in an IV”. This situation did not resolve quickly, but continued for two years.