Malta’s current shortage of HIV medicine boils down to a number of issues, including less production as other EU states phase it out in favour of better alternatives, the Health Ministry revealed to Lovin Malta.

“The treatment that has been offered so far to HIV patients is being phased out of most EU countries, including Malta, leading to less production and thereby less supply of these medicines.”

“For this reason in 2019, the Central Procurement and Supplies Unit within the Ministry for Health issued a call to identify economic operators interested in providing the service for the new treatment of HIV-positive patients,” a spokesperson for the ministry said.

However, COVID-19 forced the change over to this new HIV medication to be delayed by six months to give room for clinicians to manage the changeover with relevant clinical follow-ups.

Other issues related to export limitations and registrations arose with UK supplies as a result of Brexit.

“Switching supply form one country to another is a complex situation as there are internal policies and business implications which take long to be resolved, excluding the planned forecast for the country.”

New HIV treatment will be introduced to the local market in the near future with €3 million allocated to fund it. It will replace the current outdated cocktail of drugs taken.

However, some HIV patients in Malta have been left in limbo, resorting to appeals to other patients to share their stock as the national medicine supply ran out this week. 

HIV activist and lawyer Mark Joseph Rapa warned that the ministry isn’t keeping stakeholders, particularly HIV patients, informed about the situation and that the government should have preempted such disruptions.

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