The shorter answer is, yes, in any system that uses pharmaceuticals.
Ultimately, the pharmaceutical supply chain is quite fragile. It's a very precise engineering process. When it goes wrong, it goes wrong for very large volumes of products. It affects large parts of the world when this happens. I don't think there would be any system in the world that can avoid shortages of pharmaceuticals because of that.
The truth of the matter is that, from what I've seen over the last five or six years in Canada, New Zealand's supply shortages have been less problematic, and there have been fewer of them than I've seen here in Canada. Part of the reason is the different supply chains that the two countries use. There are really two or three blocks of supply chains around the world, and countries tend to be engaged with one or the other, but not both of them.
The other reasons for the difference, despite the fact that New Zealand uses sole-supply purchasing for off-patent pharmaceuticals, are the contracting arrangements. The contracts are very specific about continuity of supply.
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