Novo Nordisk NovoRapid Shortage Statement

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Josh DUK

Josh DUK

Former Online Community and Learning Manager
Staff member
Relationship to Diabetes
At risk of diabetes
Supply of NovoRapid® Penfill® (insulin aspart) for people living with diabetes in the UK


Novo Nordisk UK is aware that there is currently a stock shortage of its medicine NovoRapid® (insulin aspart) Penfill® for people living with diabetes in the UK. The shortage is temporary and is due to an unforeseen delay in delivery of the next order of this medicine.


We would like to reassure people living with diabetes in the UK that alternative treatment options are available and options can be discussed with their healthcare professional. The shortage is not a consequence of any safety or quality related concern with NovoRapid®.


We are in discussions with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), patient organisations, pharmacies, and healthcare professionals to monitor our stock levels and to return to a stable level of supply that remains consistent with the needs of patients and the NHS as swiftly as possible.


Ensuring a continuous supply that meets the needs of patients and the NHS is of utmost importance for Novo Nordisk. Novo Nordisk is working to remedy the shortage and remains committed to ensuring people with diabetes receive the treatment they need.
 
My pharmacy has been unable to get NovoRapid for 10 days now. I had to head to Sainsburys in the end because I needed some! I spoke to Novo Nordisk this morning (11th July 2022) and they have advised the shortage should be resolved in two week!!
 
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SWWChris said:
My pharmacy has been unable to get NovoRapid for 10 days now. I had to head to Sainsburys in the end because I needed some! I spoke to Novo Nordisk this morning (11th July 2022) and they have advised the shortage should be resolved in two week!!
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If you are struggling to get NovoRapid, you should be able to get your prescription changed to an alternative fast acting insulin such as Humalog. In my experience the profile is similar.
There are other faster acting insulins such as FIASP but I found that took some time to get used to so may not be ideal for a temporary "fix".
 
helli said:
If you are struggling to get NovoRapid, you should be able to get your prescription changed to an alternative fast acting insulin such as Humalog. In my experience the profile is similar.
There are other faster acting insulins such as FIASP but I found that took some time to get used to so may not be ideal for a temporary "fix".
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Or, if it's just the Penfill, maybe change to disposable pens?
 
Thanks for replies everyone. I have now got some pre loaded pens so that with the remainder of the cartridges I got from Sainsburys a week ago I am fine for the time being.

Chemist is taking a load of grief and some confused/upset/worried patients. Like I say Sainsburys had stock of the penfill cartridges a week ago. Problem is now people will be stockpiling which wont help!!
 
SWWChris said:
My pharmacy has been unable to get NovoRapid for 10 days now. I had to head to Sainsburys in the end because I needed some! I spoke to Novo Nordisk this morning (11th July 2022) and they have advised the shortage should be resolved in two week!!
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I have plenty spare. I use small amounts and would go to waste otherwise. Happy to send to you next day a) if we are allowed to share prescriptions b) if they would be ok out of the fridge for a while with it being so hot ?
 
Thanks for making this post. I've had a stressful 2.5 days trying to sort out a prescription. At the time of writing this I've got less than 50 units of Novorapid left, probably enough to get me through today and tomorrow morning if I watch what I eat.

I submitted my usual request with LloydsDirect 2 weeks ago, when I started my 2nd to last cartridge as I know it can sometimes take them a week to deliver.

When it was still showing 'In stock soon' towards the end of last week I had no choice but to ask them to send what medication they had as I also needed the Levemir that was on the prescription. I sent a support chat through to them asking how can they possibly not have had any stock of a commonly used insulin for so long.

It then got to Monday morning and I'd had no response from LD so I tried calling them, but no-one was answering the phones despite waiting in their 'queue' (read: just plain ringing) for over 30 minutes. I phoned my GP who told me they would call LD on my behalf and call me back.

It got to about 2-3pm and I'd not had a call back, so I rang again, only to be told "here's the number for LD, please try calling them once more and call us back if you're unsuccessful, we can't issue another prescription as we don't know if you've received the current one(!?)". The number they gave me was the same one I'd been trying before but I tried it again, another 30 minutes of waiting and listening to ringing.

I called my GP back and had to speak to someone different who, after I explained the situation, immediately said "we'll get another prescription for penfill sent out in the morning to the pharmacy of your choice". "Great" I thought. "Problem solved".

Not quite.

In the morning I logged onto my LD account via my computer instead of the app and found there was a different telephone number as well as an 'authentication code'. So I called that and lo-and-behold I got through to someone within 10 minutes who told me they would contact their stock team and get back to me. I also raised with them the lack of a proper telephone queue and that the number showing up when doing a search (and given to me by my GP) is completely different to the one their site shows when logged in.

I didn't see the prescription show up until mid-late morning and so called the pharmacy as soon as I could in the afternoon only to be told that yes, they had the prescription, but they hadn't been able to get any stock of Novorapid penfill for weeks. They offered to return the prescription to me so I could take it elsewhere. I said OK and then got on the phone to the other pharmacies nearest to me, as I didn't want to make a 40 minute round trip by foot in the scorching heat if they didn't have it. One pharmacy told me that they too haven't been able to get any for weeks and the other didn't even answer their phone.

Back on the phone to my GP I go and another 20 minutes waiting in their queue. I explain everything once again. They had no idea there was any kind of shortage but they told me they would call the 2 largest pharmacies in the area and call me back, as if anywhere was going to have some, it would be them.

They call me back and confirm what I had told them and tell me that they're going to issue a prescription for flex pens as there isn't a shortage of those. LD also got back to me later yesterday evening saying that all of their suppliers have no stock of penfill.

So that brings me up-to-date, the flex pen prescription should be with the pharmacy, I've got to call them in a bit to check and hope they've actually got them available, otherwise I'm on another ring around the pharmacies.

I've had T1D for nearly 30 years and in all that time I can't say I've ever had to get to the point where I've only got a days worth of insulin left and had to do so much back and forth between people to get the medicine that keeps me alive.

What I find most shocking is that neither the pharmacy (LloydsDirect), nor my GP seemed to know what was going on and that this hadn't been flagged to all NHS patients using Novorapid penfill sooner. If I had received a text or email from one of them saying "there's currently supply constraint on Novorapid penfill, so we'll send you flex pens instead" that would've been fine, but to just say nothing for 2 weeks I find just unacceptable.

I'm not usually the sort of person to rant or complain about anything, so I apologise for the long post. Normally I would just say "well, if that's how it is, that's fine", but when it's something as important as life-saving medicine I think that's a step too far.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
 
It does sound like a complete mess at the moment. For info, I've had a problem getting a different drug (not diabetes related) recently, with nobody being able to say what the underlying issue is. Brexit?
 
Rob Oldfield said:
It does sound like a complete mess at the moment. For info, I've had a problem getting a different drug (not diabetes related) recently, with nobody being able to say what the underlying issue is. Brexit?
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The Novorapid problem seems to be more an ongoing Novonordisk problem, rather than Brexit. This article is behind a paywall, but you can read enough of the start to get the gist.
medwatch.com

Issues at Novo Nordisk lead to shortage of fast-acting diabetes drug

The Danish Medicines Agency has reported that it is currently difficult to find diabetes drug Novorapid in Denmark.
medwatch.com medwatch.com
 
I made it right through your post. Absolutely shocking and completely unacceptable situation.

Dreadful communication. Uncaring. Ill-informed all round.

I wonder how this sort of serious problem can be avoided going forwards.

I know I do get a bit stressed when my own life sustaining meds have to be ordered, but thankfully I do have a few spares. I get stressed because there was one occasion when they had no stock and no suggestions on how to resolve the issue. And on another occasion the doctor actually refused the meds but appologised for his mistake when I queried and complained.

There should be no issues and no stress where life sustaining meds are concerned.

I admire your determination and persistance. I hope in the end you get a successful outcome. Do let us know.
 
Gwynn said:
I made it right through your post. Absolutely shocking and completely unacceptable situation.

Dreadful communication. Uncaring. Ill-informed all round.

I wonder how this sort of serious problem can be avoided going forwards.

I know I do get a bit stressed when my own life sustaining meds have to be ordered, but thankfully I do have a few spares. I get stressed because there was one occasion when they had no stock and no suggestions on how to resolve the issue. And on another occasion the doctor actually refused the meds but appologised for his mistake when I queried and complained.

There should be no issues and no stress where life sustaining meds are concerned.

I admire your determination and persistance. I hope in the end you get a successful outcome. Do let us know.
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Thanks for the kind reply.

Thankfully I do now have some Novorapid Penfill.

I called the local (nearest) pharmacy shortly after my first post and they told me that they didn't have any flex pens and, like the penfill, haven't been able to get any for at least a couple of weeks.

OK, so back on the phone I go, working down the list of local pharmacies in distance order. I have to say Lloyds Pharmacy should really answer their phones, we have 2 nearby and neither of them have answered any time I've tried to call them!

After about 3 or 4 calls I speak to a pharmacy who said that yes, they have 1 box of flex pens available, so I set off to first pick up my prescription and then walk to this other pharmacy. However, when I get to the pharmacy that I'm told has my prescription, they don't have it. They advise me to call my GP and get a code which they can then use to give me the prescription. I call them only to be told it hasn't been approved yet and I have to wait until this afternoon. I try to escalate it but I'm told all they can do is "send an urgent message as the people sit upstairs and we can't go talk to them directly".

At that point I was pretty much done. There was no sympathy at all that I could run out of live-saving medicine and run the risk of ending up in hospital. I went back home absolutely livid. My wife said she would start calling all of the pharmacies for me while I called the local Diabetes Centre to see what advice they may have or if they have any Novorapid available.

The Diabetes Centre were, as always, extremely helpful. They told me they don't keep stock of insulin but that I should have been offered an alternative fast-acting insulin by my GP in this instance. They also had not heard of any kind of shortage of Novorapid.

As I finished my call with the centre, my wife told me she had spoken to a pharmacy who had penfill in stock which was about a 20 minute bus ride away, so off I went. Sure enough I got there and they had it available. I was so happy. I explained briefly the issues I've been having trying to get my medicine and they were amazed at how much effort I've had to go through.

So, I'm sorted now for a few weeks. I guess the indicator of things going back to normal will be when I get my Novorapid come through from LloydsDirect that I ordered 2 weeks ago.

I thought there was supposed to be a 6 week stockpile that was put in place back when there was the risk of a no-deal Brexit? It makes me wonder if this has been bubbling for quite a while but is only suddenly apparent as the reserve stockpile has run out?

I feel like I should make a complaint to someone about the sheer lack of communication between manufacturer, GPs, pharmacies and patients but I don't know who that would even be to. It feels as if I hadn't of been as persistent with this then I would still not have any insulin.

At least if I do, I've already got it all typed out!
 
NN have publicised it somewhere cos other folk on here have reported difficulties - see this thread from last Friday


Big Pharma work in different way their wonders to perform. There's been a shortage of 8mg Doxasozin tablets for a couple of months now. After much to-ing and fro-ing, the pharmacy have managed to get my GP surgery to temporarily alter it to a double amount of 4mg tablets - so I need to take 2 instead of 1 every day. The only actual difference is that the 8mg are 'extended release' and the 4mg aren't. I said I couldn't care less about that bit, frankly. The pharmacist explained that the licence had expired for the 8mg unextended tabs, so rather than going to the faff of getting another licence, they just bunged a coating on em rendering them extended release and got a different licence for them instead. Nobody other than them has any idea why there's a problem with them though and they haven't said, as yet .......if they ever let anyone else know.
 
Sorry - just realised, I didn't realise, we were on the same thread - I'm more interested in the contents of posts rather than exactly where they appear - Ooops.
 
I think one of the issues is, if your prescription says cartridges they can’t just say to you “oh we haven’t got any cartridges we’ll just give you pens instead”, they can only give you cartridges. I had the same lack of communication when apidra was unavailable for several months though and trying to get an alternative insulin prescribed and ordered in was a complete pain.
 
Ys @Lucyr - as they only put I more scrip for the 2x 4mg I had last month and I've just ordered the 2nd ones - I daresay I'll have to same trouble again in a few weeks time - so I'm not looking forward to that .... but at least the pharmacy are working with me on this one.
 
EmmaL76 said:
I have plenty spare. I use small amounts and would go to waste otherwise. Happy to send to you next day a) if we are allowed to share prescriptions b) if they would be ok out of the fridge for a while with it being so hot ?
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Sharing insulin is actually illegal and isn't allowed obviously
 
Officially you aren’t allowed to share or pass on prescription items to others unfortunately @EmmaL76 :( plus, as you say the transport of the insulin in current weather might make it degrade or behave unpredictably. So annoying if you have a surplus and can see others in need - but there are lots of understandable rules and regs about such things.

Hopefully the shortage won’t last long, and stability will return shortly. My biggest hope is that people don’t start stockpiling, which could make the situation massively difficult for much longer than necessary.
 
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I'm planning to pick mine up from the pharmacy today I hope they have it.
 
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