Pharmacies throughout the Netherlands are finding it difficult to buy enough stocks of some types of contraceptive pills, the Volkskrant reported on Wednesday.

The main cause of the shortage, which affects 1.2 million women who take Mycrogynon 30, is the destruction of a large batch of the pills in September which failed safety tests.

‘If a sample of the pills is not up to the safety standards, the whole batch has to go. That means tonnes of pills,’ Martin Favie of the association of generic medication producers Bogin told the paper.

But the shortage is also caused by insurers’ insistence that pharmacies provide cheaper, generic drugs where possible, pharmacists’ association KNMP said.

The Dutch demand for the cheapest drug causes producers and suppliers to limit their stock and that means that any hitch in the production process can cause shortages within weeks.