Urgent warning over shortages of life-saving drugs: Damning report reveals ... trends now
Sick Britons are facing alarming drug shortages and being made to wait longer for new medicines than our European neighbours, a damning report reveals.
The Government has been urged to carry out a review of the UK's 'broken' medicine supply chain as costs soar and patients are left in pain.
Experts described shortages of the likes of painkillers, antibiotics and epilepsy drugs as a 'shocking development' that is also piling pressure GPs and pharmacists.
The research by the Nuffield Trust think tank highlights 'underlying fragilities' in the global and UK supply chain following pandemic lockdowns and Brexit.
Its analysis of freedom of information requests and public data reveals the number of notifications from drug companies warning of impending shortages has more than doubled from 648 in 2020 to 1,634 in 2023.
The Department of Health and Social Care had to provide pharmacists with an additional £220million in the year to September to subsidise purchases where there were no drugs left at the usual NHS price.
Prior to 2016 there were rarely more than 20 so-called 'price concessions' per month but they peaked at 199 in late 2022 and have remained high ever since.
Meanwhile, Britain has been slower to approve drugs than the EU, analysis suggests.
Between 2022 and 2023, only four drugs authorised by the European Commission (EC) had been approved faster in Britain.
However, 56 were approved after the EC and eight had not been approved at all as of March this year.
The 'Future for health after Brexit' report said while problems in the UK were not caused by Brexit, leaving the European Union (EU) has exacerbated them.
This is due to the fall in the value of sterling and the UK being removed from EU supply chains.
Lead author Mark Dayan, from the Nuffield Trust, said: 'We know many of the problems are global and relate to fragile chains of imports from Asia, squeezed by Covid shutdowns, inflation and global instability.
'Officials in the UK have put in place a much more sophisticated system to monitor and respond, and used extra payments to try to keep products flowing.
'But exiting the EU has left the UK with several additional problems –
