Swiss pharmacies have reported shortages of emergency hydrocortisone injection kits since mid-October, and a public shipment tally has brought a supply scandal into view: at least 2,100 kits were exported while patients at home struggled to obtain them. The supplier, Virelta Remedies, says it was meeting existing contracts and denies diverting stock set aside for Switzerland.
The kits are used by people whose bodies cannot produce enough cortisol, a hormone needed to respond to severe illness or injury. Pharmacy returns collected by the Federal Therapeutic Goods Office show that 73 of 148 responding pharmacies had no kits available on 28 October, with shortages reported in nine cantons.
The figures became a public issue after about 260 patients, pharmacy trainees and young health workers gathered outside the federal health department in Bern on Friday. The coordinated action, organised through local patient groups, echoed youth-led demonstrations elsewhere in Europe but focused on access to a medicine many patients carry for emergencies.
Gracie Hauck, a 34-year-old patient from Fribourg, said she had called 11 pharmacies before finding a kit. “It is supposed to be the thing you can rely on when everything else goes wrong,” she said. “I should not need a spreadsheet and a day off work to find one.”
We were told the national reserve could not be released, while shipments were still crossing the border.
Roger Fortin, hospital pharmacist
Export tally challenges supplier
The office’s weekly shipment register lists 2,140 kits exported between 14 and 27 October, mainly to buyers in Germany and Italy. The register does not identify the buyers or prices, but Virelta’s annual supply contract requires it to maintain a domestic emergency buffer of 1,500 kits, according to a summary published by the department.
Roger Fortin, who manages pharmacy procurement at a hospital in Lausanne, said the shortage began after wholesalers received only a fraction of their usual October orders. He compared pharmacy delivery notices with the export register and raised the discrepancy at a public health committee meeting. “The arithmetic does not prove that every exported kit should have stayed here,” he said. “But it does demand an explanation of what counted as reserve stock.”
Virelta said a production-line maintenance delay cut its October output by 38%, and that some export orders had been contracted months earlier. The company said it had notified the department that it could not supply the full domestic volume, but did not explain why the reserve was not released. It said it would provide shipment-level details to officials.
Patients wait for a response
The federal department has ordered a review of the company’s allocation records and told Virelta to deliver 900 kits to Swiss wholesalers by 6 November. It has also asked cantonal pharmacies to report daily stock levels. The department said the export tally alone could not establish whether a contract or supply rule had been breached.
Zita Hegedűs, a pharmacist in Geneva, said her pharmacy had begun lending kits between branches and prioritising patients who had no usable backup. The shortage has also pushed some customers to seek prescriptions early, adding pressure to clinics. Virelta said it expects regular deliveries to resume by late November, but pharmacists say they have not yet received firm dates for all orders.
Swiss authorities require suppliers of essential medicines to notify the federal department when deliveries may fall short. Patient groups say the episode has exposed a gap between that notification system and the stock patients can actually obtain. Organisers of Friday’s demonstration plan to return next week unless pharmacies can confirm that the promised deliveries have arrived.
