The 35 member organisations
of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) adopted
a new position paper on medicines shortages at their 49th General Assembly held last weekend
in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. The topic of medicines shortages has
occupied the members of EAHP for quite some time due to its growing
impact on patient care and the work of hospital pharmacists.
Since 2012,
members of EAHP have increasingly reported difficulties in sourcing
medicines required in their hospitals. Consequently, the profession
with the support of EAHP has been working on raising awareness
about the problems that medicines shortages cause. To this end, hospital
pharmacists have proactively shared information with other
healthcare professionals in their working environments on how
medicines shortages are managed and continuity of supply is
ensured.
However,
despite the early advocacy efforts by EAHP and the ongoing
interventions of its members, reports on medicines shortages
continued to materialise at accelerating speed throughout Europe.
To establish a better understanding of the problem in European
hospitals, EAHP conducted three different surveys in 2013, 2014 and
2018 which illustrated the far reaching consequences that medicines
shortages pose. In particular the percentage of hospital
pharmacists reporting shortages to be an issue in terms of delivering
the best care to patients has seen a significant increase in the
past couple of years with over 90% of survey respondents
highlighting in 2018 that medicines shortages are a problem faced
in their hospital pharmacy.
To
significantly lower the negative impact that medicines shortages
have on the well-being of patients, EAHP’s members agreed on the
complete revision of its previous position paper which had been in
force since 2012. In particular, European hospital pharmacists are
underlining the need for concrete European action since the
problems caused by medicines shortages cannot be handled solely at
national level. This has also been acknowledged by a
joint task force of the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) and the
European Medicines Agency (EMA) as well as in
recent EU publications, such as for instance the European
Commission’s policy recommendations on the future of the Union issued
ahead of the Sibiu summit and the Council
Recommendation on strengthened cooperation against
vaccine-preventable diseases, which recognised the
issues caused by vaccine shortages.
For EAHP it
is time to act now. European hospital pharmacists are consequently
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment