The US has been hit hard by the shortage of prescription drugs and the severity has increased so much in two years that President Barack Obama has addressed the problem.

Obama has asked the Food and Drug Administration to look in to the matter and come forward with real cause of the shortage. He has also affirmed to look into the requests of manufacturers in regard to changes, they want to make in their production line.

From last two years, numerous problems have been witnessed by patients, physicians and pharmacists, due to the scarcity of some major prescription drugs. All this has built up an atmosphere full of suspicion clouds. Experts were of the view that shortage has been intentionally created by manufacturers to replace old drugs with new and expensive drugs.

As per the conversation held with Obama, FDA officials have to present a report to the US Justice Department about the exact reason of prescription drugs. Drugs, which have been witnessing acute shortage, are antibiotics, heart drugs, and antidepressants and most importantly chemotherapy drugs and other medicines used to anesthetize patients.

The pharmaceutical industry has rebuked the allegations of experts and affirmed that shortage is not creating from their side. It is due to the scarcity of raw ingredients and there are lot other factors. Some of them being contamination in drugs, delays in regulatory approvals, and safety hassles with manufacturing plants.

The New England Journal of Medicine published report is of the view that manufacturers do not get enough profit from these old generic medicines as they are quite cost effective.

Study authors Mandy Gatesman and Thomas Smith were of the view that the shortage is manmade and to prove this, they cited an example. They affirmed that paclitaxel, a traditional generic medicine used during chemotherapy is witnessing shortage but its alternative ‘Abraxane’ is freely available in markets just because it is 19 times more expensive.