Emergency Stormont summit meeting held after pharmacists warn of 'very real' threat to medicines supply

An emergency summit took place at Stormont on Tuesday morning, a week after a warning was issued by a group representing Northern Ireland pharmacies that the "threat to the supply of vital medicines is very real."

MLAs were briefed on what Community Pharmacy NI has described as "expected widespread medicine shortages this winter", which the group say is a situation being "exacerbated by an underlying funding crisis in community pharmacy."

At the cross-party meeting of MLAs, representatives from the community pharmacy sector said that 74% of pharmacists were spending between one and three hours per day sourcing medicines, with shortages already on approximately 1,000 medicine packs per pharmacy per month.

Gerard Greene, Chief Executive of Community Pharmacy NI said: “As medicine supply pressures deepen and the sense of concern builds, we have taken the opportunity to give elected representatives a full account of the gravity of the situation in terms of the very real health and patient safety concerns that are arising rapidly.

“This is just one symptom of an under-lying problem, community pharmacy is operating with reduced funding of £20-30 million this year compared to each of the last two years, and that is before rising costs are factored in. The Department’s proposed £5.3 million falls far short of what is needed at this time to enable the service to be maintained and for pharmacies to be able to buy the medicines being prescribed from wholesalers.”

Last week, following the earlier warning issued by Mr Greene’s organisation, a spokesperson for the Department of Health insisted “national and locally tried and trusted mitigation arrangements” are in place and stressed that a “support package” worth in excess of £5.3 million is on the way.

Yesterday, Mr Greene added: “The reality is that the Northern Ireland Drug Tariff, has never been designed to suit the health needs of the local population. Now, medicine prices of many common generic medicines are spiralling out of control and community pharmacy simply cannot be expected to meet these pressures without proper assistance from the Department.”