Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Minister of Health Jason Copping announced the deal to bring 5 million bottles of acetaminophen and ibuprofen on Dec. 6. Currently Health Canada has only authorized acetaminophen.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Health Canada has authorized the importation of children’s acetaminophen from a Turkish pharmaceutical company into Alberta as part of the province’s plan to address shortages of youth pain medication amid a recent wave of respiratory infections.
The federal agency authorized the importation of paracetamol, more commonly known as acetaminophen, from Atabay Pharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals last Friday. The approved medication is a liquid suspension for children aged two to 11.
The government website says the drug will be available to Alberta hospitals but it does not list community or retail pharmacies.
The agency approved the product nearly a month after Premier Danielle Smith and Health Minister Jason Copping announced a tentative deal with Atabay to bring five million bottles of acetaminophen and ibuprofen to local shelves. At that time, they said they were hopeful the first shipment would arrive by Christmas.
The Health Canada website did not list any authorizations for ibuprofen produced by Atabay and the federal department declined to provide more details.
Charity Wallace, a spokesperson with Alberta Health Services, said in a statement on Tuesday the province is still working with Health Canada and that the federal agency would best be able to speak to the “timeline for approvals.”
She noted that Health Canada considers factors such as labelling, packaging, formulation and quality.
“The manufacturer and Alberta Health Services have provided all the information requested to Health Canada at this point. Health Canada would be best able to speak to this part of the process,” she said.
Federal regulations that require both English and French on medication labels have been blamed for slowing the importation of children’s pain medication to ease the shortages. The Health Canada website does not include any labelling information for the Atabay approval; under the regulations, medication used in hospitals are exempt from the bilingual labelling requirement.
While the province has yet to make public the cost of this deal, spokesperson Steve Buick said previously that Alberta is paying a “small premium” over the planned retail price. The government was also required to purchase the minimum amount of product set by the supplier but felt it crucial to do so in order to beat out other prospective buyers.
Because the five million bottles would exceed Alberta’s need, the government said it could share the excess supply with other provinces and territories. Ten shipments in total are expected.
Ms. Smith said, in early December, that expanding access to fever-reducing medications would lessen hospitalizations as Alberta – and jurisdictions across the country – faced an intense wave of respiratory infections among children and a subsequent spike in children’s hospital admissions. Staff in Calgary and Edmonton, homes of the province’s two children’s hospitals, have had to be redeployed to address the surge.
Waste water data collected by the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the University of Calgary indicates COVID-19 cases jumped in mid-December and have since plateaued while flu cases dipped, as of last Wednesday. Data on respiratory syncytial virus shows that cases ballooned between mid-November and mid-December, though that data has not been updated in more than two weeks.
The federal government says nearly two million units of children’s pain medications have been imported to Canada to alleviate shortages, about 638,000 of which arrived in the latter half of December. Other medications came from the United States and Australia.