The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7317 p379
18 September 2004

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

PDF 110K, Acrobat Reader

· Counterfeit drugs
· Packaging
· Simvastatin
· Shipman inquiry
· The register
· Personal control
· The Society
· New contract
· Employee pharmacists
· Tuberculosis
· Retention fee
· Overseas membership
· Onlooker

Letters to the Editor

Counterfeit drugs

Sharing findings

From Mr M. Hussain, MRPharmS, Mrs J. Alldred, MRPharmS and Mrs J. Reeves

We are writing to highlight some of the issues that have been raised following the two recent patient level recalls for counterfeit Cialis and Reductil. First and foremost I would like to congratulate the professionalism of all those community pharmacists who acted promptly to initiate the recall in what was an extra workload in addition to the day-to-day running of the pharmacy and dispensary.

After the Cialis alert, an audit of pharmacies in Leeds North East Primary Care Trust was conducted. All 23 pharmacies in our PCT had received the alert and all 23 had checked their stocks. However, only two had searched their patient medication records to identify patients taking Cialis tablets. We think this is partly because of the poor design of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency alert.

The following additional issues were highlighted:

· Some PMR systems cannot be interrogated in such a fashion as to reveal to whom a particular medicine was dispensed
· In some cases pharmacy staff were not aware how to interrogate their systems to retrieve these data
· A small minority of pharmacists did not think that it was their responsibility to contact the patients because they had supplied the medicines in good faith (these pharmacists were reminded of their possible legal and certainly professional obligations with regard to preventing harm to patients)
· Systems to cascade alerts to dispensing doctors’ practices need to be aligned with alerts to pharmacies

The PCT is seeking to work with community pharmacists and the LPC to identify how these issues can be resolved for the future. We will also be contacting the MHRA with reference to the layout of the alert.

There is nothing to indicate that pharmacies in Leeds are any different from those in other areas of the UK and, therefore, we thought that it was important to share our findings with the profession.

Mohammed Hussain
Community Pharmacy Adviser

Jo Alldred
Head of Medicines Management

Jayne Reeves
Clinical Governance Manager
Leeds North East PCT

Send your letter to The Editor

Next Topic (Packaging)