My kids were sick last week. A nasty cold swept through our household. Having sick children is terrible, but it is even worse when you can’t give them the necessary medicine.
I know not all parents agree with giving their children Tylenol or Advil but I do, when they need it.
However, I made several trips to several different stores in town and could not find any Tylenol.
Once I found one lonely little bottle of Advil, so I scooped that up. But there was no cough syrup, no different brands of Tylenol and there wasn’t even any of the homeopathic stuff.
Nothing, just bare shelves.
I even tried to order some online and everywhere seemed out of stock.
My sister lives in Ontario and also had sick children last week and also couldn’t find any medicine.
It is really frustrating not to be able to get children’s pain medicine. Another shortage of something else due to supply chain issues compounded with a surge in demand due to COVID-19 and cold and flu season.
Some federal politicians have recently called for Health Canada to allow for the importation and sale of foreign language-labelled medication into the country and provide guidelines to doctors and pharmacists on how to administer them.
This has happened before.
In May of 2020, Health Canada allowed for the importation and sale of Spanish-labelled inhalers, due to a shortage of Canadian-labelled products. So these steps wouldn’t be unheard of. But sometimes the government is slow to react.
READ MORE: English is a weird language
Drug companies have also ramped up production but the supply is still not meeting the demand.
In the meantime, parents can talk to a pharmacist, who could compound adult medications for children if need be. But everyone knows that pharmacies aren’t always open and there are certain flavours that children like. It isn’t a perfect solution but it could help some.
While this issue gets sorted out, I hope people aren’t stockpiling the medicine when they can get it and only buying what they need.
Once again, we are all in this together.
@MariscaDekkema
marisca.bakker@interior-news.com
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