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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Anna Bawden Health and social affairs correspondent

‘We’re firefighting in the background’: the pharmacists coping with record drug shortages

Reena Barai: she is standing in a doorway between shelves of medicines in packaging, and wears a black and white striped dress with black cardigan. She is Asian and has collar-length curly dark hair and glasses; she is smiling and resting one hand on a black desk
Reena Barai, a pharmacist in south-west London, said the shortage of medicines was ‘a really serious issue that needs solving’. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

A survey of thousands of pharmacists has found that patients’ health is being put at risk by record drug shortages in England, leaving patients and pharmacists frustrated they cannot get the medicines they need.

“I just feel like the government and the NHS aren’t taking this seriously enough, because we’re firefighting in the background silently,” says Reena Barai, who owns and runs a pharmacy in south-west London. “They’re not realising the impact of this. Is it going to take patients to die without medication for them to start waking up and realising that this is a really serious issue that needs solving?”

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