The UK and EU are set to strike a deal to help tackle post-Brexit shortages of medicines such as antibiotics, ADHD medication and epilepsy drugs at next week’s reset summit.
The two sides are finalising a health security agreement that will help address shortages of certain drugs which have got worse since Brexit, according to a draft text of a joint UK-EU statement seen by The i Paper.
The deal is designed to boost the sharing of intelligence on medicine supplies, helping the two sides collaborate as they experience supply shortages driven by global instability, but also partly by post-Brexit trade barriers in the case of the UK.
Experts on post-Brexit health policy said the planned deal appeared to be “significant” and a “good first step” in addressing shortages that have hit both sides of the Channel in recent years, with recent crises in obtaining medicines such antibiotics needed for winter illnesses, and critical products to help people with long-term conditions such as ADHD and epilepsy.
It is expected to come alongside a major Brexit reset package of agreements on food and drink trade, carbon markets and youth mobility that Andy Burnham said will boost the UK’s economy by adding 0.4 per cent to gross domestic product.
An EU draft text of a joint statement, which is forming a key part of the negotiations, refers to both sides using the 20 November summit in Brussels to welcome the signing of a memorandum of understanding on health security.
Deal is ‘significant’
This will include “matters concerning medical countermeasures” and the finalisation of a specialised committee on health security as part of the overarching post-Brexit trade deal.
The i Paper has learnt this will help both sides inform each other of where there are shortages and share information on how to source supplies.
Mark Dayan, Brexit programme lead at the Nuffield Trust, a health think-tank, said the deal was “significant” and would help both the UK and EU, which have been dealing with a “really bad four or five years for medicines shortages… a really serious issue that is affecting patient care and taking up a huge amount of pharmacists’ time in the NHS”.
“Because of the way managing medicine shortages works, finding out about them sooner is really useful,” he said.
“It should allow the UK and EU to have better intelligence, and that they are able to identify better where there are stocks and move them around.
“Those are things that are very important with how you respond to an individual medicine shortage and try to make sure it never reaches patients.”
It comes with the UK facing extra barriers to bringing medicines to the country and moving them the other way to the EU due to extra regulatory steps and border checks necessitated by Brexit.
UK locked out of measures to alleviate shortages
Britain also finds itself left out of EU measures to alleviate shortages which have been driven by a series of crises including Covid, the Ukraine war and potentially the Iran war which has given the “fragile system” of medicine supply a “battering” in recent years.
For example, the EU’s Critical Medicines Act, which would allow the bloc to subsidise factories in its territory which would then give preferential access to member states to drugs, “has the potential to lock the UK out”.
Dayan went on: “If we could find a way to work more deeply with the EU on processes like that where we are coordinating with the medicines we try to reshore, we are coordinating in trying to build up supply chains, and not engaging in beggar-my-neighbour policies, I think that would be the ideal.
“I don’t under-rate how difficult that would be to arrange post-Brexit and this is a good first step.”
The agreement will help manage ongoing shortages in areas like ADHD and epilepsy medication, as well as “particularly serious” current shortfalls for drugs such as Creon, which helps people with cystic fibrosis and pancreas issues digest food, and Lanzoprazole, a common treatment for stomach ulcers and heartburn.
“It might be more helpful for heading off the next wave, but it could help us manage them [current shortages] as well,” Dayan said.
The EU was approached for comment.
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