Few issues are getting as much attention right now as drug shortages. At Teva, our mission is to provide patients with affordable and innovative medicines and the drug shortage issue is a top priority for us. We are working with members of Congress, the FDA and other major manufacturers to develop both private and public sector solutions.

But what patients, providers and lawmakers want to know is how we get medicines to patients now.  Unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer, but there are meaningful steps that can be taken. Teva is making major investments in upgrading our facilities and developing redundancies. These improvements to our existing capacity will help us to more fully supply the market and correct many issues that may affect our manufacturing.

We are collaborating with several other injectable manufacturers on an Accelerated Recovery Initiative (ARI). The initiative would create a new communications tool that will provide a third party with supply schedule information for drugs that are either in shortage or in jeopardy of falling into short supply. The aggregation of the data will provide a snapshot of the full market supply and demand for drugs and assist the FDA in making decisions about where to focus their resources.

The user fee programs currently under consideration coupled with the efforts and collaboration of drug manufacturers will make significant strides in correcting our current supply issues as well as providing the FDA with the resources needed to review applications, conduct inspections and work with manufacturers. While there is not a perfect or easy solution, it is important that immediate and meaningful actions are taken by the manufacturing community and that the solutions are multi-faceted and tailored to avoid shortages when possible and correct shortages when they occur.