Honorary membership certificates presented
The President with Dr Evans (left) and Mr Lönngren |
Certificates of honorary membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society were presented during the February
Council meeting to Dr John Evans, a former Privy Council nominee member of the Society’s Council, and Thomas Lönngren, executive director of the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA).
The President said that the Society’s royal charter of 1843 had
given it the power to elect as honorary members people who had rendered
distinguished service to the Society or to pharmacy. The first honorary
member was elected in 1868 and the Society elected no more than two or
three members a year.
John Evans’s contribution to the Society and the profession had
been enormous. He had served as a Privy Council nominee on the Council
for 15 years, retiring in 2002. As a physician and barrister, and a former
deputy chief medical officer in the Department of Health, he had brought
wise counsel and often a touch of realism to the Council’s proceedings.
His contribution to the regulatory side of the Society’s activities,
especially through his membership of the Law and Ethics and Infringements
Committees, had been of great value. The Council had always appreciated
his professionalism and impartiality at meetings.
Although no longer a Council member, he remained a member of the Modernisation
Steering Group, to which he had made a significant contribution. It was
of help to the group to have the perspective of a professional from another
regulatory body of a profession.
Accepting his certificate, Dr Evans said that it was sometimes important
to have an outside voice to remind people of the other realities in life,
and he was pleased and proud to have had his chance of doing that. He
would continue to read The Journal and look with interest at pharmacy,
because it had an important future.
The President said that Thomas Lönngren had graduated in pharmacy
in Sweden and gone on to gain an MSc in social and regulatory pharmacy.
He then became a lecturer at the institution of social and regulatory
science in the pharmacy faculty at Uppsala University. In 1986 he became
senior pharmaceutical officer in charge of the control of medicines,
cosmetics and medical devices, narcotics and contraceptives at the National
Board of Health and Welfare. Immediately before taking up his current
post in London, he was director of operations for licensing and post-marketing
control of human and veterinary medicines at the Medicinal Products Agency
in Sweden, having previously been the director of operations for the
control of herbal medicines.
Dr Lönngren had steered the EMEA through a period of change, which
would result in it taking on new responsibilities. His contribution to
the efficacy, safety and quality of medicines, both in Sweden and now
throughout Europe, had been enormous. His contribution to pharmacy was
greatly valued.
Dr Lönngren said that it was a great honour as a non-UK citizen
to receive membership of the Society. He thought it was important to
strengthen relationships between drug regulators and the pharmacy profession,
since they had the same ultimate goal of achieving safe and effective
use of medicines.
One task of the UK’s new Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory
Agency was to provide information to the public and the patient, and
new European legislation would soon give the EMEA a role in providing
information to patients, the public and health professionals. One central
point was the establishment of a pharmaceutical database, including all
pharmaceuticals authorised on the whole European market, that would be
available to the public and health professionals. The EU council’s
intention was to spread more information on a European level out to citizens.
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