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UK has second lowest number of pharmacists per person in Europe

The United Kingdom has the second lowest number of pharmacists per person in Europe and numbers are likely to decline further, the Office of Health Economics says.

In the latest edition of its “Compendium of Health Statistics”, the OHE says that, in the UK, there are 0.6 practising pharmacists per 1,000 population compared with nearly 0.6 in Germany, over 1.0 in France and over 1.4 in Finland. The only country with a lower number of pharmacists per 1,000 population is the Netherlands.

Mr Adrian Towse, the director of the OHE, told The Journal at the launch of the Compendium: “The UK has a low number of pharmacists compared with the rest of the European Union. We think the number is likely to continue to decline.”

The OHE says that the average workload of pharmacists, as measured by the volume of National Health Service dispensing, grew by an average of 3.6 per cent per year throughout the 1990s. However, it adds that this rise is moderate compared with other developed countries — the outlay on pharmaceuticals in the UK is about three-quarters of that in Germany and half that in France.

Over the past 10 years, the number of prescription items dispensed for cardiovascular and central nervous system disease has increased, that for respiratory, gastrointestinal, endocrine, dermatological and musculoskeletal disorders has remained fairly constant, with a small decrease in the figure for antibiotics.

The average spend on medicines per person is £118 and the medicines bill accounts for 12.3 per cent of total NHS spend.

Overall, the compendium shows, there has been a large increase in the amount of money spent on the NHS. It is likely that the UK will reach the Government’s target of spending 8 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product on health by 2006. However, this was not quite the good news that it seemed to be, because the rest of the EU was now spending, on average, 9.2 per cent of its GDP on health. “Although we are improving, it is going to be struggle to keep up with achieving even the average EU spend,” Mr Towse said.

Further information can be found at the OHE website www.ohe.org.

Copies of the 13th edition of the OHE Compendium of Health Statistics cost £340 (£75 to the public and to “not-for-profit” organisations) including postage and packing and are available from OHE, 12 Whitehall, London SW1A 2DY, telephone 0207 930 9203.

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