Women in three primary care group areas of Southern Derbyshire health authority should be able to access emergency hormonal contraception from community pharmacies by the end of the month.
When the scheme is launched, Southern Derbyshire will be the third area of England in which EHC has been made available from pharmacies on a pilot basis under group protocol arrangements. Schemes at Manchester and Salford and at a health action zone in Lambeth, London, are already running.
Mrs Helen Hulme (pharmaceutical adviser, Southern Derbyshire health authority) told The Journal on May 9 that pharmacists at 15 pharmacies in the North Amber Valley, South Amber Valley and East Derby PCGs had been trained to provide the service.
Posters for display at surgeries, pharmacies and other suitable location were being currently being developed, as were credit-card sized reminder cards that would give information on the pharmacies from which the service was available.
"The PCGs want to do it, we only need the health authority's approval," Mrs Hulme said. "We hope to get it going before the end of the month."
The idea for the scheme originated from an examination of the rates of teenage pregnancy in areas covered by the health authority. Although the actual numbers of teenagers becoming pregnant were small and the data applied to two to three years ago, the rate of 10.1 pregnancies per 1,000 13- to 15-year-old girls was well above the national average of 8.7 pregnancies per 1,000 girls of that age.
In the three districts chosen for the EHC scheme, the rate was much higher than the average for the health authority as a whole.