Urgent warning blood pressure drug and painkiller shortages are ‘national security issue’
Pharmacies have been forced to ration medication amid widespread supply problems.
Some 86% of pharmacies had experienced a shortage of aspirin (Image: Getty)
Medicine shortages that pose a significant risk to people’s health should be treated as a national security issue, a House of Lords committee has warned. Pharmacies have reported widespread shortages of common drugs in recent months and years, including aspirin and blood pressure medication needed to prevent heart attacks and strokes.
An inquiry by the House of Lords Public Services Committee found the Government was not proactively protecting the UK from fragile support chains and instead focused on reacting to shortages. Baroness Morris of Yardley, who chaired the Committee during this inquiry, said shortages were “not given the attention needed given the enormous impact on the country if problems arise”. She added: “There is a general lack of oversight and leadership to address current shortcomings across the medicines supply and manufacturing process.
“We’ve set out a number of recommendations in our report which should help tackle the issues raised.
“Chief amongst these is the need for better communication of any shortages to GPs, hospitals and pharmacies so they can take necessary action to support patients and more importantly, the recognition that medicines supply chain resilience is a national security issue that should be on the national security risk register and prioritised accordingly.”
The report comes after a survey of 540 chemists by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) found 86% had been unable to supply aspirin in the week to January 20.
Some had paused over the counter sales to keep stock for patients with the most acute heart conditions or in need of emergency prescriptions.
Some 50.9 million items of Aspirin were prescribed in the UK between January and October last year, making it one of the most commonly used drugs in the country.
The Public Services Committee called for senior Government oversight of the issue and for ministers to “look more closely at how we can boost medicines manufacturing within the UK to reduce our reliance on single source supplies or an over reliance on China or India where the majority of our NHS medicines are made”.
Baroness Morris added: “This should ideally reduce our vulnerability to outside factors such as national disasters or trade or political disputes affecting increasingly fragile global supply chains.
“The Government needs to consider compiling a Critical Medicines List and then look at how we can increase the UK manufacture of the medicines on that list and shore up our resilience and stockpiling based on it.
“Medicines are essential to the health of the nation and so we urge the Government to follow our recommendations to ensure the UK has the vital, strong, resilient medicines supply chain it needs to keep people healthy.”
Dr Nick Thayer, head of policy at the Company Chemists’ Association, said shortages were directly impacting patients and “take pharmacy teams away from providing vital frontline NHS care”.
He added: “Community pharmacies buy and dispense over 1.15 billion NHS-prescribed items each year. Shortages directly impact patients and take pharmacy teams away from providing vital frontline NHS care.
“The competitive buying of medicines by community pharmacy has successfully driven down prices for many years, saving taxpayers billions, but prices have now hit rock bottom.
“Unfortunately, this makes the UK a less attractive market to global manufacturers and suppliers, leading to a less resilient supply chain.
“We urgently need the government to invest in both community pharmacy funding and medicine pricing to make the UK more attractive, and the supply chain more resilient.”
