UK pharmacists to press government to act urgently on medicine supply problems caused by PI

As a result of the recent advent of parallel importing of drugs from the UK, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB), which represents pharmacists, says that it will be calling on government to take urgent action to resolve the immediate crisis in medicines availability to prevent patients being put at risk of potential serious harm as a result of being unable to obtain appropriate medication.

The RPSGB Council has taken this step in response to increasing stock shortages across a range of widely supplied medicines for chronic conditions, shortages which appear in recent months to have worsened. Additionally the Society will be formally approaching the government to ask for the urgent establishment of an Inquiry into the supply of medicines to pharmacies to find a long term solution to this problem.

Currently, over 40 well known medicines are officially acknowledged to be in short supply. These fall across a wide range of therapeutic categories and include among many others, antihypertensives, epilepsy treatments and even some medicines to treat cancer and prevent rejection following organ transplantation.