{"id":3325,"date":"2019-02-08t11:32:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-08t11:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/?p=3325"},"modified":"2019-02-08t11:40:24","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08t11:40:24","slug":"brexit-and-your-prescriptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/brexit-and-your-prescriptions\/","title":{"rendered":"brexit and your prescriptions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>consultant pharmacist dr neil hamilton explains the current situation and urges people not to panic. <\/strong><\/p><p>at the time of writing, it feels as though the only certain thing about brexit is the uncertainty!\u00a0 my clinical pharmacy team at the royal hallamshire hospital and our friends at the pha uk are being asked ever more frequently about the potential impact of brexit on their medicines.\u00a0 i am also aware of the amount of discussion on social media and the internet.\u00a0 i can completely understand everyone\u2019s anxiety and absolutely sympathise.<\/p><p>i don\u2019t have a crystal ball or any guarantees to offer.&nbsp; however to dispel some chinese whispers and scaremongering\nthat you may have heard from a very busy rumour mill, &nbsp;i wanted to give you some facts about the\nstate of play nationally; firstly in general terms, and also what we have been\ndoing within the ph community.<\/p><p>the prospect of a \u2018no-deal\u2019 brexit has become more likely\nfollowing the defeat in parliament of the government\u2019s proposed withdrawal\nagreement.&nbsp; a national body, the\npharmaceutical services negotiating committee (psnc) has been \u2018deploying all\nnecessary resources\u2019 to maintain supplies of medicines to patients when the uk\nleaves the eu at the end of march.&nbsp; they\nare focussing on contingency planning with the department of health and social\ncare (dhsc) so the impact on community pharmacies is minimised. &nbsp;<\/p><p>recently the chief pharmaceutical officer, dr keith ridge\nissued communication to summarise the work underway.&nbsp; his summary included the following plans;<\/p><ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>medicine supply assessment \u2013 a comprehensive\nassessment of medicines to identify those products made in the eu.&nbsp; <\/li><li>six week stockpile \u2013 how the government is working\nwith the pharmaceutical industry to develop a six week stockpile of\nprescription-only medicines to ensure supply is maintained across the nhs.&nbsp; this involves securing additional warehouse\nspace including refrigerated storage.&nbsp;\nthis plan includes all prescription and pharmacy medicines, vaccines and\nunlicensed medicines.<\/li><li>alternative transport routes \u2013 the government\nhas reviewed current routes and made plans to re-route as necessary.&nbsp; medicines and medical products will be\nprioritised to maximise the ability of securing supplies after 29<sup>th<\/sup>\nmarch. <\/li><li>clinical research and trials \u2013 participation and\nrecruitment to trials should continue as normal.&nbsp; trial medication will, just as with other\nmedicines as described above, receive priority to alternative transport routes.<\/li><\/ul><p>it is clear that a \u2018no-deal\u2019 brexit will be an extremely\nchallenging time but the focus of the pharmaceutical services negotiating\ncommittee (psnc), the department of health and social care (dhsc) and the\npharmaceutical industry will be to ensure that patients will be able to get\ntheir medicines and vaccines, regardless.&nbsp;\nfor their part, a european body representing the industry is also\ncalling on negotiators to agree a series of actions to protect patients.&nbsp; these measures include fast-track lanes for\npriority routes through ports and airports.&nbsp;\ni understand that they are even considering making raw materials exempt\nfrom border checks so as not to affect the production of medicines.<\/p><p>dr ridge emphasised that over-ordering and stockpiling\nlocally by pharmacies is not helpful or appropriate.&nbsp; this would only add pressure on the\navailability of medicines for patients elsewhere.&nbsp; please bear this in mind \u2013 even at your\nindividual level.<\/p><p>within ph, representatives from all the uk centres have met\n(and been reassured by) the homecare companies to ensure that they have plans\nin place to cope with maintaining supplies of the medicines, pumps and\nconsumables needed.<\/p><p>my advice is to be particularly careful over your stocks and reordering of prescriptions to ensure that you have enough medication to get across 29<sup>th<\/sup> march.&nbsp; however i do not advise stockpiling as this could deprive someone elsewhere access to their medication.&nbsp; at this stage we just don\u2019t know what will happen and how it will impact us, but be reassured that there is a huge amount of work being done both here and in europe to minimise the risk of medicine supply interruption over brexit.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/app\/uploads\/2019\/02\/brexit-1024x682.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3328\" srcset=\"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/app\/uploads\/2019\/02\/brexit-1024x682.png 1024w, \/\/www.aselpijama.com\/app\/uploads\/2019\/02\/brexit-600x400.png 600w, \/\/www.aselpijama.com\/app\/uploads\/2019\/02\/brexit-300x200.png 300w, \/\/www.aselpijama.com\/app\/uploads\/2019\/02\/brexit-768x512.png 768w, \/\/www.aselpijama.com\/app\/uploads\/2019\/02\/brexit.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>consultant pharmacist dr neil hamilton explains the current situation and urges people not to panic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3325"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3331,"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions\/3331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.aselpijama.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}