THE turning point was the Brexit referendum. Before voting to leave the EU in June 2016, medicine shortages were not something the UK often had to worry about.
But once the votes had been counted, the UK Government realised that it may have an issue on its hands. As well as urging pharmacists to stockpile a six-week supply of key medicines ahead of the transition period ending, Whitehall also started to keep a close eye on drug shortages and supply.
“A lot of the measures for medicine shortage were brought in as the Government in London tried to prepare for Brexit and anticipated, probably correctly, that it would have a really big effect on medicine supplies,” Mark Dayan, the Brexit Programme Lead at the Nuffield Trust told the Sunday National.
