Aspirin Bayer 500mg can not find..Why?

[fforest1]

Aspirin Bayer 500mg seems to be out of stock every where in Pattaya..

Any one have any idea whats going on?

[Sheryl]

No idea, probably shipment has not arrived from distributor.

 

There are plenty of other brands of aspirin  besides Bayer.

[impulse]

Similar in Bangkok, where I tried 6 local pharmacies that all offered me the 82 mg tablets.  None of them had the 325 or 500 mg.  

 

Obviously, at 6 tries, not an exhaustive survey in a city where you can hardly swing a dead cat without hitting a pharmacy.

 

Thanks for reminding me to pick some up before I fly back to Thailand this weekend.

 

Edit:  BTW, I asked for aspirin, not a specific brand.

Edited December 2, 2016 by impulse

[Langsuan Man]

A couple of months ago everyone was complaining that they couldn't get 82 mg aspirin 

 

Wonder what is going on and why these aspirin shortages continue to occur 

[dddave]

The disappearance of Bayer Aspirin from both Bangkok and Pattaya pharmacys , especially the 10 tablet cards, started this past spring. I frequently used them for arthritis pain and suddenly, I could not get them.  I asked several pharmacists and got several answers:  Bayer re-designing the package, the government and Bayer having a conflict on approved dosage, even that the government wanted to eliminate full strength aspirin as an OTC medicine.  Now, after a year AFAIK, it is still not available in the 10 pacs.  It is indeed a mystery.

[jerojero]

Why insist on Bayer? ASA tablets generic exactly same.

[raro]

just back from my local pharmacy on the corner. I have a bit of a headcold and asked for actifed and aspirin. Both according to the pharmacist no longer available in Thailand. Instead she wanted to sell me a plastic bottle and sodiumchloride (which is nothing but salt) in a fancy packaging at a fancy price to clean my nose. 

 

Went to the 7/11 next door and bought a beer instead. 

[Fookhaht]

On 12/3/2016 at 1:18 PM, Langsuan Man said:

A couple of months ago everyone was complaining that they couldn't get 82 mg aspirin 

 

Wonder what is going on and why these aspirin shortages continue to occur 

I used to use the 81mg "baby aspirin" for blood therapy (one of the treatments for hypertension-related problems).  There was a big outage in 2011, and I was told that Thailand's main factory that produced it (I think it was branded "Aspint") was badly damaged in the 2011 floods, and never recovered.   I have not been able to get it since.  

Another pharmacist told me, about that time, that a new regulation required that any aspirin dosage over 81mg no requires dispensing only by a certified pharmacist.   This explained why I could no longer get it when the pharmacist was out.  

 

And lastly, a pharmacist told me that any dispensing of aspirin over 81mg required a doctor's prescription. 

 

There's three stories; take your pick.  

[JohnC]

Aspent readily available, I buy mine every month from Fascino Pharmacy, got a bottle this week. 

[Fookhaht]

40 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Aspent readily available, I buy mine every month from Fascino Pharmacy, got a bottle this week. 

Wow, super-good news.  That's the first bottle I've seen of the stuff in 5 years!  

[impulse]

1 hour ago, JohnC said:

Aspent readily available, I buy mine every month from Fascino Pharmacy, got a bottle this week. 

  

The problem, of course, being that you have to take 6 of those to equal one 500 mg dose, and take one of those bottles every day or two to have what would be considered a pretty standard dose for someone with arthritis, a hangover or similar.

 

The 500 mg tablets (generic) cost less than $0.01 each in the USA when bought in bulk.  Which means the Bayer 500 mg (when we could get them) used to cost over 10x the US price.  And when OTC meds (on the UN essential medicines list, no less)  in a country like Thailand cost more than they do in the USA- which has the highest health care costs in the world- something corrupt is going on.

 

Out of curiosity, what's the price for that bottle, which is about the equivalent to $0.10 worth of aspirin in the USA?

 

Edit:  The good news is that now that I know this isn't a transient glitch, I'll ask my next guest from the USA to bring a couple of bottles.  The big ones.

Edited December 8, 2016 by impulse

[johng]

I've asked I quite a few pharmacies around Pattaya and they mostly said that aspirin would be back in 2017 after a new factory came online ! none of them could offer an alternative, haven't tried the big Fascino on north Pattaya road so will give them a try.

[Sheryl]

We are mixing up the discussion a bit between full dose and low dose aspirin.

Aspent (low dose) was in short supply for a while though I now see it on the shelves where I live. There are several other brands of low dose aspirin that have never been out of stock. Full dose aspirin also has many brands and readily found.

Aspirin does not require a prescription nor have to be gotten from a hospital and no discussion of making it so AFAIK. However it cannot be sold in places that lack a first grade pharmacist on duty, which is more than one places than one might think.

The person behind the counter is often not a pharmacist nor the one in charge of ordering stock and will often have no idea why they don't have something. Thais in that situation when asked will usually make up an answer rather than admit they don't know. In addition, pharmacies will usually not want to direct you to their competition so if they either are out of something or are not allowed to sell it because they lack a first grade pharmacist they will not tell you that it can be gotten elsewhere but rather make it sound like no pharmacy has it.

Hence all the nonsense information going around about aspirin etc.

Boots and watsons tend to sell only one (usually imported) brand of a drug so if that runs out they will have none. Proper large pharmacies will usually have multiple brands so less likely to be out of stock.

Actifed however truly is not allowed to be sold in pharmacies anymore.

[raro]

There is another thread in the Pattya forum related to this issue.

 

I just reported back that I was a Fascino, which is the #1 pharmacy in Pattaya, and they do not stock any regular Aspirin anymore either. Also here the same answer: Bayer stopped producing it, which I do not believe. What you can get there is Aspent. The sales girl at Fascino made it clear that Aspirin is NOT to cure headaches but for thinning blood only. Something I did completely wrong over the last 30+ years :D

[Langsuan Man]

27 minutes ago, raro said:

The sales girl at Fascino made it clear that Aspirin is NOT to cure headaches but for thinning blood only. Something I did completely wrong over the last 30+ years :D

 

I wonder where she got her medical degree

 

Warfarin is for thinning blood.  Believe it or not, they still don't understand why Aspirin is good for regular headaches and other types of pain  

[Sheryl]

2 hours ago, raro said:

There is another thread in the Pattya forum related to this issue.

 

I just reported back that I was a Fascino, which is the #1 pharmacy in Pattaya, and they do not stock any regular Aspirin anymore either. Also here the same answer: Bayer stopped producing it, which I do not believe. What you can get there is Aspent. The sales girl at Fascino made it clear that Aspirin is NOT to cure headaches but for thinning blood only. Something I did completely wrong over the last 30+ years :D

Unless you were talking with a full fledged pharmacist in a senior capacity there involved i  dealings with distributors and the like (NOT the staff behind the counter, I would discount every single thing said and in future, don't bother trying to get information of this sort from sales staff.

 

Might however like to try asking for non-Bayer brands of aspirin by name and see what happens

 

A.S.A. 500

Anassa

Aspirin BD 325 (as the name implies, 325 mg so would take 2 tabs)

Aspaca 300 (ditto)

Asrina

 

and many more names