Brexit and medication

[miasmum]

I have been thinking of this for the past little while and I have a question, just a question, I dont want to spark a debate I'm just interested.....

When Luke lived at home we were always told not to accept medication from outside of the UK. Due to the fact you dont know how long it's been stored, you don't know how its been stored and how it was transported. So Luke's prescriptions were always marked 'no parallel imports'. That didn't stop the pharmacy handing me medication from Spain, Belgium, France etc, but I just handed it back with the comment, we dont accept parallel imports and they always got a UK alternative within 24 hours.

So, we can do it, its just cheaper to get drugs from abroad. Yes it will cost the NHS more to buy home produced drugs, but no more than the poor NHS gets abused by smokers, obesity, alcohol, and every other abuse I hear on a daily basis at work "what you cant see me until tomorrow, I'm off to A&E then, type of thing.

Also won't this create more jobs for graduates, encourage more youngsters to enter the pharmacology world, and create jobs throughout the whole spectrum from graduates to admin, to sales and drug reps?

Interestingly I have just looked at our medications and Tim's three are all manufactured here and the two antibiotics I am on are too. Only my Leterozole is from The Netherlands. When I had this type of discussion with a friend a few months ago and I checked 2 out of the 3 of Tim's were from Europe so I am wondering if they have already started buying from the UK

[TheOstrich]

As far as I can see, all my medication is currently "UK". It hasn't always been that way, I certainly used to note that some of the drug packaging was primarily Spanish or Netherlands. I hadn't realised you could insist on UK products!
I'm more concerned at the moment that the pharmacy is actually able to supply the drugs as there has, for the last 6 months, been a shortage of some quite standard medications, especially for blood pressure. I have seen it said that the basic "ingredients" are in short supply - and the manufacturers have found they can sell at higher prices to markets elsewhere.

Of course, just because the packaging appears UK doesn't necessarily mean it's been manufactured in the UK, I suppose.

I'm all for the pharma industry being home-based, and let's face it there's many other products and industries where we've allowed ourselves to become reliant on foreign imports (such as motor cars), so I do hope we can start to get a bit more self-reliant. OK, raw materials may have to be sourced from overseas, but we could at least restart the processes of manufacturing in this country.

[miasmum]

Ossie, this is really interesting

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... aceuticals

[jenniren]

How interesting, I've never really checked our meds before, but have just had a look and they are all UK.

[Workingman]

As I understand things] the UK does not manufacture every single drug it uses, in fact very few countries worldwide do. We produce a vast range, but not everything, and the reason is simple: economics of scale. So, we export the drugs we make to countries that do not produce them and we directly import those we do not produce - a two way street. It is certainly not an EU or Brexit thing.

Even then this business about the UK listing is confusing.

I take a drug, Elquis (generic apixaban). It is licensed in the UK by NICE to Bristol-Myers Squibb / Pfizer with Pfizer being the patent holder, and the package says Bristol - Myers Squibb / Pfizer EEIG, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 1DH, UK. However Pfizer's manufacturing sites are listed as in the US, Poland, Spain, India(2) and Taiwan.

I take that to mean that although it is not made in the UK it is directly imported using Pfizer's closed supply chain and then packaged here. I suspect that is also the case for many non-standard and low volume medicines, which makes sense.

[saundra]

Of never looked at .y prescription to be honest
I have on occasion found galipazide my diabetic tablet in short supply even years ago must go look

[saundra]

Of never looked at .y prescription to be honest
I have on occasion found galipazide my diabetic tablet in short supply even years ago must go look

Of never looked at .y prescription to be honest
I have on occasion found galipazide my diabetic tablet in short supply even years ago must go look

just looked all manufactured in UK except a 5milligram one in Germany how interesting

[Suff]

It is not a new problem, the issue with getting drugs. If you do a search in Google, excluding Brexit [-Brexit], you get articles from more than a decade talking about supply issues for the NHS.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health ... he-UK.html

That being one of them from 2015.

WM, it is interesting the research you showed on your drugs. The reality, post Brexit, without a deal, is that the drugs manufactured in the US, India and Taiwan, would be more competitive (assuming we apply a flat WTO tariff or no tariff at all), than Poland and Spain. Whereas, today, the NHS is having to take whatever Poland and Spain can manufacture or pay the premium of importing with the EU tariffs on drugs.

I suppose the other part is that the UK could start manufacturing some of these drugs, also, then sell them elsewhere in the world outside of the EU, without barriers.

I'm having a problem getting my Metosyn right now. The last tube I got was back in March when there was a huge ramping up of medicines. It appears that has been run down and now supply is an issue. Hardly critical but irking that I'm still trying to get my prescription filled a week from when I was prescribed. Not surprising though given what is currently going on.

That article I linked talks about being unable to get a drug manufactured by a Canadian pharma company who had decided to stop, or reduce, manufacture of the drug. This, of course, is political as much as economy driven. So I suppose that it will remain a political football and people who need drugs will suffer to some degree or other.

[Kaz]

Shared by the husband of a very dear friend of mine, on Facebook today

"Absolutely frightening interview with Dr David Nicholl (consultant neurologist and adviser to the Government on its Brexit plans) on TV this morning. He says the government is 'winging it' regarding availability of life saving drugs after Brexit and there are no plans in place to resolve this issue.

He is aware that the Government is stockpiling body bags because essential life savings medicines (75% of which come from EU) will not be easily available after Brexit.

My own consultant also confirmed to me last week that this is going to be a major problematic issue.

The Conservative MP interviewed responded by saying that people had to trust the government.

This is not Project Fear. This is peoples lives that are at stake.
Your parents, your children and your friends will all be at risk."

[Suff]

Kaz, you might want to read the government report on medicines post Brexit.

Especially the parts about:

Existing zero tariffs
The fact that all signatories (including the EU), extend zero tariffs to ALL WTO members. Yes we are a member of the WTO. In fact we are a Founder member of the WTO.
The fact that there are 446 million people in the EU who rely on UK medicines reaching them for their health. Now there are only 550 million people in the EU, so that is a pretty BIG impact.

You might also want to dig a bit into the detail and stop looking at percentages. We sell 11.9bn to the EU. The EU sells 18.2bn into the UK. However the figures diverge there. The EU sells 37 million packs to the UK for that 18.2bn. The UK sells 45 million packs to the EU for that 11.9bn. Which means that we are sucking in very expensive medicines from the EU. Medicines we could source from elsewhere in the world if needed.

As for the 73% figure not being Project Fear? Hahahahaha clonk. That was me laughing my head off.

The figures from a two year, long running, government investigation by a cross party committee, shows us that:

We export 24.9bn of our 41.8bn pharma sector. Or 59.5% of our pharma capacity by value
We export 48% to the EU And 52% to the rest of the world.
We import 24.8bn of our 41.8bn pharma sector. Or 59.3% of our pharma capacity by value

Of those 59.3% we import, 73% comes from the EU.

73% of 59.3% is 43.3%.

Yes it is still a significant number. But, remember, that is by Value. Remember, also, the figures of packs. We export 8 million more packs of drugs to the EU than we import from them.

We also have to remember that not All of these medicines are life saving.

So we are down to 43.3% of value of all medicines, 8 million less packs than we export to the EU themselves and no actual numbers on how many of those medicines are vital life saving medicines. If it is more than 50% I would be highly surprised as a lot of these don't travel well and need to be made in the UK as they degrade very quickly. But, anyway, let's go with the 43.3%.

Now let's see about the tariff's and what they mean. So AstraZenica say they'll be hit with about 150 million in extra costs. Let us put that into perspective. AZ has around 110,000 staff. If the average wage is 10,000, then the annual wage bill is 1.1 billion pounds. Tell me you don't believe their average wage is 10,000 a year, because I can tell you it is not.

So, in reality, tariffs are very low, the drugs which are manufactured for the EU are less than 29% of our business but are sold to more than 80% of the EU population. Drugs from the EU are 43.3% of our drugs business, by value and we have no idea just how many of them are life saving. But, at worst, it would be 43.3%.

Now I'm not going to say that 40 odd % is not a problem. It is. But it is hardly 3/4 of our life saving drugs failing to be delivered the day after Brexit because nobody will sell them to us any more.

YES it is Project Fear. NO the doctor had no clue what he was talking about. YES you have been Had!

I'd ask why you continue to believe these things, the picture is bad enough without people spouting the wrong figures. But bad enough is manageable. However people who don't want to leave don't want manageable, they want outrageously unmanageable disasters so that we'll all fold and agree to remain.

It's not happening and statements like this won't make it any more likely.