Obtaining Estradot in Australia has been a big problem over the last couple of months, but I have managed to get 3 boxes in the last few days, so I now have a total of 4 boxes. I'm also on an Australian menopause facebook page and other ladies have also been able to obtain supplies, so hopefully this means things are starting to improve. We all plan on leaving every patch on as long as possible so we're not wasting anything. I'd suggest other Estradot users do that, even if you aren't having supply issues yet, because you just never know.
This is a worldwide problem because of manufacturing issues in the US which may continue until the middle of 2017. I was told that directly by Novartis, but my pharmacist said that supply would be better by the end of December 2016. Maybe he's right because quite a few of us have definitely been able to obtain some supplies over the last few days, so I'm not sure what or who he knows..lol..
Some areas may be worse hit than others. This will probably depend on local demand and what stocks various pharmacies have on hand. For some reason it seems to just be the 50 patch (probably because it's the most popular one), but the flow on has affected the supply of the 25s and 100s, and to a lesser extent the 37.5 and 75. Btw - I've been told by a couple of pharmacists that cutting a 100 in half isn't ideal because you will always lose a certain amount of the dose doing that, but if you're desperate it might have to be an option, however getting a hold of the 100 could also be an issue.
It has also affected the alternative patches because when one dries up of course people are going to turn to the alternatives. I tried the once a week patch, but I didn't like it. It's supposed to be the same dose, but it's definitely lower and I've been told by two pharmacists that this is a common complaint, so I may try putting on an extra half patch to use them up.
Good luck. Hopefully things will improve soon.
