Community Pharmacy England has reported that ‘pharmacies and patients are feeling the impact of the increasing number of medicines in short supply, including those for life-threatening conditions’.
In a statement, the organisation’s CEO Janet Morrison said: “Patients and community pharmacies are continuing to be hit by medicine supply problems on a regular basis. Supply issues regularly rank as one of the top pressures facing pharmacies and in our most recent polling of the sector, many pharmacies have told us the situation is worse than ever before, and they remain worried about the impact on their patients.
“The shortages affecting several medicines including anti-epileptic drugs, certain diabetes and cystic fibrosis treatments have led to delays in people receiving their medicines, causing great anxiety and distress for patients due to the impact on the management of their condition(s).
“The problems also put operational and financial burden on community pharmacies: pharmacy teams are spending many hours every week trying to source medicines and this is diverting their time and attention away from other essential tasks including the delivery of vital services such as Pharmacy First.
“Pharmacies also often find themselves supplying medicines at a financial loss due to inflated purchase costs or inadequate reimbursement and this is exacerbating the long-standing funding issues they are grappling with.
“Medicine supply issues are harming pharmacies and the patients they serve up and down the country and with alarming frequency. The government and the NHS must intervene now to stabilise the medicines market, tackle supply chain disruptions, and improve access to essential medications for patients.”
The Sunday Times recently reported that student Amber Gibb, who has cystic fibrosis and relies on a drug called Creon for survival, was told by her local pharmacy that they had completely run out of the drug. She claimed that prior to this, she had already been having to ration the supplies she had after shortages meant she was given just half of her regular dose.
On 15 May 2024, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust released a statement claiming that it has been monitoring issues with Creon supplies across the UK since late 2023 and acknowledging that supply issues have caused ‘significant worry and stress for those affected who have sometimes needed to travel to multiple pharmacies to find Creon’.
It predicted that ‘although Creon is still regularly coming into the UK, the supply issues may unfortunately continue for a while’.
In a video advising people about Creon shortages, Dr Keith Brownlee, director of medical affairs at the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, said: “We’ve been working with the distributors, Viatris, with partner organisations and with the NHS to try to mitigate these issues.”
A research briefing on medicine shortages from the House of Commons Library was published on 1 May 2024. In the briefing, researcher Claire Duddy noted that “since 2021 there have been reports of increasing supply problems affecting medicines”, adding that “recent media coverage has highlighted shortages of medicines used to treat diabetes, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and epilepsy, as well as hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and others”.
Duddy went on to say that “supply chains for medicines are long and complex and shortages can be caused by multiple factors” such as manufacturing and distribution problems, increased demand and wider geopolitical factors like Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and conflict in Ukraine.
It draws attention to the fact that the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have published guidance on the management of medicine supply and shortages, which outlines the processes followed and options available to the government to address supply disruption.
Such processes include: issuing serious shortage protocols which enable pharmacists to provide
specific alternatives to scarce medicines; taking regulatory action to approve new medicines or, in exceptional circumstances, extend medicine expiry dates; restricting the export of medicines; and offering pharmacies price concessions to help them cover the cost of NHS prescriptions.
