South Africa is planning to tighten the rules around pharmacies making their own compound versions of medicines, including the popular weight-loss and diabetes treatments Ozempic and Mounjaro, Reuters reports.
The move is likely to be welcomed by pharmaceutical giants such as Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly as they seek to curb the pharmacy-made products competing with their blockbuster GLP-1 drugs.
South African Pharmacy Council CEO Vincent Tlala said his organization was working with the industry regulator to update standards governing the compounding of medicines because they are worried that some pharmacies have become, in effect, “small-scale manufacturers,” producing large quantities of treatments in advance, rather than for specific patients.
The discussion on new guidelines, expected to be published around March next year, follows June’s court victory for Novo Nordisk against local compounding pharmacies making unauthorized copies. With the highest adult obesity rate in Africa, at 30%, the drugs are in high demand in South Africa, but the cost of the trademarked version puts them out of reach for most people.
