Parallel trading restricting medicine access, says ABPI

The ABPI has blamed parallel trading by a minority of pharmacists as the root cause of the current medicines shortage in the UK.

The pharma body was responding to a new survey by Chemist + Druggist magazine of around 200 pharmacists that highlighted a number of concerns.

Twenty-seven per cent of those surveyed said they had known a patient whose health had suffered as a result of difficulties in sourcing a medicine and seven out of ten respondents reported they were “very concerned” their patients had been affected by drug shortages.

Chemist + Druggist also reported that 93% of pharmacists have had to ask a GP to change a prescription because of problems sourcing a drug.

But the ABPI the situation had not been caused by a lack of supply from pharma companies, but was instead due to parallel trading by some pharmacists.

Richard Barker, director general of the industry body, said pharma has supplied “more than enough medicines” to satisfy patient demand in the UK, but admitted that there is still not enough getting through to the front line.  

“We believe that the problem is worsening,” he said, despite efforts by the Supply Chain Forum (a new round-table for parties concerned by supply chain actions, set up by the Department of Health earlier this year).

Barker said the shortages were the result of a “minority of pharmacists trading medicines intended for UK patients”, and that to curb this the roles of the pharmacist and wholesaler “need to be clearly separated”, as they are in a number of other European countries.

A spokeswoman from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain told Pharmafocus that the survey’s 200 respondent was a “tiny proportion” of the 48,000 pharmacists in the UK, but acknowledged there was a problem with the supplyof  medicines.

Parallel trading occurs when patented drugs are repackaged, either by pharmacists or wholesalers, for sale elsewhere in the EU.

Several years ago EU countries were importing their drugs into the UK because of the strength of the pound, but more recently the situation has reversed as the pound weakened against the Euro, allowing UK pharmacists to sell their drugs into the EU. 

This story was highlighted in February after the Royal Surrey County Hospital Foundation made £300,000 profit through selling medicines on to parallel traders who exported the drug to lower-priced European markets.

After that story emerged the ABPI restricted the amount of drugs that are supplied to pharmacists so that they only received the exact number asked for.

Some pharmacists however have underestimated the amount of patented drugs required and under the stricter system have been ‘short-changed’.

To combat this an ‘emergency order arrangement’ has been established for pharmacists, but an ABPI spokesperson said that it was not uncommon to receive requests that “clearly are not emergency requirements and may in fact be certain pharmacists trying to obtain medicines for contingency stock building or diversion overseas”.

The spokesperson added that this should be discouraged, as this only “exacerbates the problem”.

Ben Adams