Britain faces medicines supply crisis
Updated on 16 December 2009
Over the past year pharmacists have found themselves increasingly unable to get hold of key drugs, leading to long delays for patients.
The situation is now so serious that some retailers warn it could lead to fatalities as supplies tighten over the Christmas period.
Six-year-old Ben Hooper, from Staines in Middlesex, (check) has a severe form of epilepsy. Without regularly taking his prescribed medicine, he can have up to 150 seizures a day. But when his mother Sally went to the pharmacy a few weeks ago she found they had none in stock.
Without his medication Ben's seizures can be so sudden that he often cuts his face when he falls.
Sally told More4 News: "I actually became quite frantic... but luckily I managed to find a bottle at the end of the cupboard that had a small amount of medication that was able to see us through. If I hadn't found that, then I think we would have run out of medication."
Sally and Ben are not alone. In the last few months thousands of people have struggled to obtain vital medicines. And the cause of the crisis? A fall in the value of the pound.
The change in the exchange rate means it is now often more profitable to sell medicines abroad than in Britain - and some pharmacists and wholesalers are taking advantage. The export trade is estimated to be worth around £30m a year.
Retailers say the shortages are made worse by recent changes to the supply system, which has seen drug producers streamlining deliveries through just a small number of wholesalers. When these wholesalers run out, the pharmacists are forced to order direct from the manufacturer.
Emergency deliveries, direct from the manufacturer, have increased from just over 6,000 in the first six months of 2008 to more than 77,000 in the first six months of this year.
Manufacturers insist they have no choice but to limit the medicines available to pharmacists if they are to slow the flood of exports.
Whoever is to blame, all sides recognise that there is a crisis and that it is getting worse. Legally, medicines should not be sold abroad until domestic demand has been met. And calls are growing for the government to step in.