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Community Pharmacy Northern Ireland (CPNI) warned members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) yesterday that shortages of over 100 common medicines are getting worse and likely to last several months.

In a meeting of the All-Party Group with MLAs at Stormont, CPNI said many medicines, including the painkiller co-codamol 30/500mg, are in shortage and could force pharmacies to ration supplies which would affect 50 to 100 patients per pharmacy.

CPNI urged patients not to self-select alternative medicines or alter doses “without professional guidance as this may be clinically inappropriate and, in some cases, harmful”.

“Community pharmacies in Northern Ireland dispense millions of packs of commonly prescribed medicines each year and even relatively small interruptions in supply can have a rapid and disproportionate impact on patients, pharmacy teams and local health services,” CPNI said.

It revealed around 50,000 packs, or five million tablets, of co-codamol are dispensed each month to less than two million people in Northern Ireland.

CPNI warned low-dose, dissolvable aspirin “used primarily as an anti-platelet medicine for patients at risk of stroke or heart attack” were also in shortage.

CPNI chief executive Gerard Greene said pharmacies were “working intensively to source medicines, often under severe constraints” and urged ministers to “prioritise support for the sector” by removing the clawback which reduced payments pharmacies received last year for medicines dispensed by £23 million.

He warned pharmacies were struggling to pay medicines wholesalers and appealed to patients to be patient with pharmacy teams trying to source medicines.

“(Yesterday’s) discussion made clear that community pharmacy in Northern Ireland is operating under sustained and increasing pressure,” Greene said.

“The gap between medicine costs and reimbursement is widening and pharmacies here are also struggling to pay medicine wholesaler bills and receive sufficient supply of many common medicines to meet patient need.”

He urged health minister Mike Nesbitt and the Northern Ireland Executive to work with the UK Government “to strengthen medicines security and supply for Northern Ireland”.

Greene added: “If this is not addressed, there is a real risk that Northern Ireland will become a lower-priority market for medicine wholesalers, with serious implications for patient safety, continuity of care and the resilience of the wider health system.”

Photo: (L-R) Turlough Hamill, Gerard Greene and Marie Smith from CPNI and MLA Danny Donnelly.