Leading doctors have urged health authorities to aggressively control supply of semaglutide, including a potential emergency stockpile, as the global shortage of the drug drags on.

This week, AMA president Professor Steve Robson said reserves of the GLP-1 receptor agonist should be set aside for patients with type 2 diabetes in a bid to thwart off-label prescribing for weight loss.

The TGA has already threatened jail time and fines of up to $1.1 million for social media influencers who continue to promote semaglutide for weight loss.

But Associate Professor Sof Andrikopoulos, chief executive of the Australian Diabetes Society, said this advertising crackdown had failed to improve the situation, leaving patients with diabetes with the sense they had been abandoned.