NHS hit by ‘severe drug shortages’ due to Brexit red tape
NHS hit by ‘severe drug shortages’ due to Brexit red tape
Exclusive: Patients put at risk as crisis hits supplies of vital antibiotics, HRT and anti-depressants
While the story says there is a European wide shortage of drugs due to manufacturing problems, war in Ukraine etc, the extra red tape now enforced for customs imports means it's become harder for the NHS to get the supplies of drugs it needs.
Wow. Leavetards are out in force in this thread.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Professor Martin McKee, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the health of patients who rely on these day-to-day medications is being put at risk because of “very worrying” recurring shortages.
The Nuffield Trust said the number of price “concessions” granted to the NHS by the government – allowing it to pay extra for medicines in high demand during shortages – had jumped repeatedly since the Brexit vote in 2016.
Professor Hervey said international suppliers have to deal with separate batch-testing rules – the paperwork required to show that medicines are being tested properly – when delivering to the UK and the EU after Brexit.
She added: “In recent times, we have seen Brexit, the war in Ukraine, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic ... all of these have put extra stress on the medicines supply chain, stretching community pharmacies financially and often causing unavoidable delays in patient care.”
Stephen Dorrell, who served as health secretary under John Major’s Conservative government, said: “It’s amazing to think Brexiteers thought it was a good idea to disrupt the supply chain and didn’t think medicine would be included.
The president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Professor Claire Anderson, said Britain’s medicine shortages are “more acute than they were due to various factors” – pointing to manufacturing problems and fewer production facilities.
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Doubt. Brexit 'red tape' is just an import form. They aren't that hard to figure out, especially as the majority of drugs are generics and are supplied from outside the EU anyway. Brexit just created a level playing field for all the pharma suppliers. I thought the EU wanted a LPF?
I think drug companies are quite keen to remain supplying one of the world's biggest drug buyers 👇
UK should up it's manufacturing and broaden its supply chain to ensure supply. Especially as it's a Europe wide shortage and not brexit related. Kind of hard to import a drug if it's not available
You need a UK gov licence to import drugs into the UK. As we now need our own customs rather then the EU. This means the company doing so has to prove they meet all the UK standards. While those standards are currently the same as the EU. The licence still requires all the documentation to be provided separately. And translated. So def a bit more then a form.
The population of the EU is approx 448m (jan 1 23) the UK 67.7+m (23 no date) so the simple fact is where companies have a choice to sell. They have 6.5x the potential customers for exactly the same amount of documentation as the UK. Add the US 334m china 1425m india also 1425m (slightly more then china this year). And while we are far from the smallest nation of drug buyers. We are hugely down the list when it comes to actual money made by the drug companies dealing with us.
Our only advantage over the bigger nations is single payer. But that still in no way effects the work to make drugs legal in this nation. It actually makes it harder because other nations do not consider cost. They allow the insurance companies or paitent to make that choice. Our NHS via MHRA and NICE is forced to consider the cost per outcome when approving drugs for use in the UK. Meaning once a import licence is issued. The pharmacy companies importing and selling to the NHS are still limited in their ability to bid from suppliers.
UK should up it’s manufacturing
Def do not disagree. But their is limits to what we can make. Legally we need to licence drugs protected by patent law. And the drug companies will only do that if its profitable for them. The NHS already uses lots of generics when those patients have expired. Way more then the US from my own experience (so admittedly anecdotal). But many of the drugs used are still under patent. Many providing huge life style and length changes over older generic treatments available.
Drug patents are a strong system to break. Backed by international support. IE if we ignored our own laws on this. or changed them to disadvantage the drug companies. Other nation (mainly the US and EU) would be forced to sanction sales to the UK. Yes it sounds like a cartel. It really is though.
(edit when a company has the only ability to make one or two drugs that keep people alive, Its easy to threaten politicians with voter or funder death. And unfortunately the manufacture and formulation of many drugs is still protected by secrets as well as patients. This translates to. While MHRA knows how to make any drug you take. Doing so ost effectivly for some of the big ones. Takes help from the companies doing so. Or years of experimentation. Add the fact that those companies are the ones going to provide new drugs when invented. And politicians are validly worried about annoying them)
You may guess I used to work in the industry (long long before brexit). I worked writing the software system used by many drug companies to collect test data from lab trials. Used to submit to orgs like the FDA EMA and I assume now MHRA.
I agree Brexit is not everything. Heck so dose the article if you assume the tittle isd part click bait. NHS funding and Covid would be an issue without it.
But I can say that issues were happening with pharmacies i the UK having trouble competing on drug purchases just before COVID. Back in 2020 for the first 3 months while COVID was just rummers from china. I was hearing from old contacts that pharmacies were failing to fill many medications. Nice was publishing online reports n possible alternatives (often less effective) for docs to RX. Cancer treatments for chemo and ED injections were the huge ones that became 0 supply for a couple of weeks still 0 in the later case. But safety margin delays were happening throughout the drug catalogue. COVID hitting during that just made it harder.
Opinion. While NHS funding and tory attitudes to cost saving is the cause. The increased workload in supply to a relatively small market buy international standards. Is why many in demand drugs became easier to sell for more elsewhere. Not having to submit extra documentation to sell to one nation when 26 others were also looking for supplies has forced UK pharmaceutical to compete harder. And the fact that the UK MHRA requirements are identical to EMA means trying to buiy outside the EU means even more work for the suppliers.
The population of the EU is approx 448m (jan 1 23) the UK 67.7+m (23 no date) so the simple fact is where companies have a choice to sell. They have 6.5x the potential customers for exactly the same amount of documentation as the UK.
It's not that simple though, the supposed panacea that is the single market is just that. You can't just sell into the single market, you need sales and ops for each country.
In Germany, around 90% of medicines that obtain marketing authorisation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are available to citizens while in Lithuania, for example, it is only 20% of the approved drugs.
Another major problem is the length of time it takes for a drug to appear on the national market after EU registration.
Germany is again the leader in this respect, with a waiting time of around 100 days. At the other end of the spectrum is Romania, where the procedure can take up to 900 days, or 2.5 years. In the Czech Republic, the average time for the whole process is around 1.5 years.