Hello,
I live in Valencia and I want to share a problem that could affect many of us from now on.
My 15 -year -old son, who has suffered from type 1 diabetes for 5 years, has been receiving baqsimi 3 mg nasal dust in united packaging during the last 2 years.
Recently, he has changed from the pediatric endocrinologist to that of adults, and on his first visit, after mentioning that we had an expired baqsimi, the doctor prescribed us a new one, although with certain reservations, and advised us to request in the pharmacy one with the date ofmore distant expiration.
He informed us that this medicine is only prescribed to children under 18, which is a pity according to the endocrinologist himself.The price of the medication has dropped from 200 to 106 euros in 1.5 years.
The recipe requires the approval of an inspector and is only valid for one day.This could complicate the renewal of the medication in the future, since medical visits are every 6 months or more, unless the medicine has a long shelf life.The main problem we have encountered is with the expiration date of Baqsimi.
Despite asking in our usual pharmacy to provide us with one with the most distant expiration date, by picking it up the next day, we discovered that it expired in July, offering only 6 months of useful life.
We protest, since we know online that your useful life is 24 months and the previous one that we bought expired more than 15 months later.However, they did not offer us alternatives and the excuses they gave us were little convincing and contradictory.After contacting two other pharmacies, we discovered that they all had the medication with the same expiration date.
When consulting with the distribution company in Spain (Lilly), they explained that, although it is manufactured in the US. And it has a useful life of 24 months, it is possible that when it is acquired it has a lower expiration date, although it will always be ofAt least 6 months.
It seems unacceptable to waste the useful life of Baqsimi, since its value is inversely proportional to it, becoming completely ineffective when it is short, since the active substance disappears and is recommended to discard it.This gives us the impression of being more a business for the pharmaceutical industry and pharmacies than a benefit for health and, above all, for diabetic patients.
On the website of the Diabetics Association of Catalonia, it is indicated that only one Baqsimi is prescribed a year, which means that social security would not meet the glucagon needs of patients.
What has been your experience with obtaining Baqsimi recipes?What can be done in the future?
Thank you!