OTTAWA – Health Canada officials say more doses of children’s painkillers and fever medication will be available soon, but they won’t say how many or where exactly they’ll be sent.
Deputy Minister Stephen Lucas and several other senior Health Canada officials with responsibility for pharmaceutical policy were summoned to the House of Commons health committee Tuesday to explain why Canadian hospitals and nervous parents with sick kids at home are finding empty shelves where children’s Tylenol and Advil are supposed to be.The shortage began last spring but was exacerbated in the summer, when an early appearance of influenza and RSV coincided with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Parents, worried the medicines wouldn’t be available when their kids needed them, flocked to stores to stock up. Demand quadrupled. Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma said manufacturers initially told the government in the spring they could address a “tightening” in supply by increasing production. But by August, they let Health Canada know that plan was failing. After nearly two months of discussions between governments and manufacturers, Health Canada arranged to import doses from the United States and Australia. The first U.S. shipment is already on the ground. But frustration overflowed when NDP MP Don Davies asked, at the committee meeting, how many additional doses are coming in and where they are going. Linsey Hollett, the director of health product compliance for Health Canada, said that’s confidential. “Unfortunately, I’m not able to share the exact quantities,” she said…
Source: ctvnews.ca
Saturday, April 18, 2026
