The UK’s largest pharmacists’ organisation says the government is leaving seriously mentally ill people running around for vital medicines because pharmacists are not allowed to write prescriptions.
There is a shortage of antipsychotic medications for patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Health officials also expect a pill called quetiapine, which is also prescribed for people with depression, to disappear from pharmacy shelves until September.
It’s just one of dozens of vital medicines, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT), antibiotics and inhalers, that have become harder to obtain since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Surveys show that more than half of patients had trouble filling a prescription in the past year.
Under current law, pharmacists can only offer alternative medications to patients if the government issues a specific exemption for that drug, known as a severe shortage protocol.
But experts say the protocols were issued long after the shortages began, meaning pharmacists will have to wait weeks or even months before they can offer patients alternatives.
Now the National Pharmacists Association is calling on the Government to scrap the acute shortage protocol regime and allow pharmacists to decide for themselves when to write new prescriptions.
“Pharmacists are highly trained healthcare professionals who should be empowered to use their professional judgement to provide appropriate alternatives when prescribed medicines are not available,” said Nick Kaye, president of the National Pharmacists Association.
“It’s wrong to make patients go from place to place looking for important medicines when the answer may be right there in the pharmacy.”
The shortage is mainly caused by increased global demand and manufacturing problems, but experts say it is within the government’s power to ease the crisis.
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This has led the Mail on Sunday to launch a campaign to ‘End the Drug Shortage Nightmare’.
The paper is calling on the government to give pharmacists the power to offer patients alternative medicines if medicines are out of stock, and to require drug manufacturers to provide advance warning if they identify shortages and to impose fines for non-compliance.
They also believe there should be a database that allows patients to check which pharmacies have medicines in stock, and that all NHS patients should have access to well-stocked hospital pharmacies to access vital medicines.
Since 2022, the government has been forced to step in to issue 50 serious shortage protocols, three times the number issued in the two previous years.
Some lasted only a few weeks, but many lasted months, and some lasted more than a year.
The National Pharmaceutical Association has also called on the government to take several other measures to address the medicine shortage crisis.
“To solve this problem in the long term, the Minister for Health should launch a thorough review of our medicines supply chain to ensure we are prepared for the future,” Mr Kaye said.
“We also call on the new Government to appoint a Drug Shortages Officer and use this opportunity to bring together relevant agencies to fully tackle this growing and complex crisis.”
The Mail on Sunday repeatedly questioned the newly appointed Community Pharmacy Minister, Stephen Kinnock, about his plans to end the medicines shortage crisis.
However, Mr Kinnock has so far refused to respond.
Instead, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Pharmacists are currently allowed to supply alternative medicines to address the critical shortage, but we are committed to reducing red tape and making better use of their skills.”
“This includes making prescribing part of the services offered by community pharmacists.”
