Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, members of the committee.
My name is Gerry Harrington and I am the senior advisor at Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, or FHCP.
FHCP represents the companies that manufacture and distribute the vast majority of essential products found in Canadian households, including the children's pain relievers we're here to talk about today.
For Canadian families who have endured more than two years of the pandemic with school closures, illness and ongoing disruptions, the shortage of children's pain relievers has added to their anxiety. As a parent, I understand how stressful the situation is. However, I would add that the current shortage of these medicines is an unprecedented event in my 30 years in this sector, as is the level of mobilization across the industry to try to address it.
The major manufacturers of these medicines planned for higher than normal demand for these products in the 2022-2023 cough, cold and flu season. This forecasting was done with various factors considered, such as the severity of the cold and flu season in the southern hemisphere earlier this year, the expected prevalence of COVID in the community as we went into the season and the state of public health measures in place that might influence the spread of infections. Based on those forecasts, the production and allocation for Canada was increased substantially.
However, the infections came early. By late spring, as you've heard previously today, rates of respiratory infections in children were already far ahead of expectations and out of season, putting pressure on inventories just as they were being replenished. In August, a hospital's decision to require prescriptions for children's acetaminophen that had been compounded in their own pharmacy was widely misreported as applying to all such products being sold in community pharmacies. This, of course, caused an understandable degree of stockpiling by anxious parents. Indeed, demand spiked to three or four times above normal levels, quite quickly emptying supply chains and store shelves which, in turn, spurred more panic buying.
This has happened within the context of supply chains already being stressed and business still not being back to normal in our industry. Our member companies continue to face unprecedented and ongoing supply chain disruptions, including complex factors like transportation disruptions and delays, rising costs and shortages of inputs and labour. Despite these challenges, the manufacturers of children's pain relievers have already ramped up production to 30% to 40% above historic highs and plants are operating 24-7 as we speak.
Replenishing empty supply chains on the fly is always challenging, but as you know, the number of respiratory and virus cases has continued to climb through the fall, pushing ERs and pediatric ICUs well beyond their capacities, as you've just heard. Manufacturers will continue to work around the clock as long as this demand level continues.
It's important to understand that this outbreak of respiratory infections is a global phenomenon. Since late winter, sporadic shortages of these medicines have been reported in France, Ireland, Pakistan, Germany, Malaysia and Japan. Since this summer, industry has looked for opportunities, in spite of those pressures, to supplement Canadian production and allocations with new allocations from global supplies, but those supplies are tight.
As early as this summer, Health Canada was signalling to our members that it was prepared to offer regulatory flexibilities that would allow manufacturers to boost production or imports as long as these did not compromise consumer safety. Those flexibilities permitted two proposals for imported products directed to hospitals to be approved last month, as you are all aware, and I'm delighted to note that more recently we've had another proposal approved for a shipment of children's acetaminophen intended for community pharmacies within weeks.
In all three of these cases, the degree of supportive collaboration offered by Health Canada played a critical role in these successful outcomes, and I want to underline that. I want to emphasize that numerous manufacturers continue to explore opportunities to bolster supplies and are in regular contact with Health Canada to that end.
We believe these efforts will result in a marked improvement in access to these medicines in the coming days and weeks. That said, we still have no clear line of sight of the day when the number of these viral cases begins to normalize and demand for these products returns to something resembling normal. That remains, above all, the public health issue for all of us to address collaboratively.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.