The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7325 p707
13 November 2004

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Call for full allergy service from pharmacists

Community pharmacists could help plug a major gap in NHS services for allergy patients, according to Allergy UK.

“There is no reason why pharmacists cannot be trained to offer a full allergy service, including skin prick testing and clinical assessment,” Muriel Simmons, chief executive of Allergy UK, said. “We have always advocated training for pharmacists in allergy.”
Mrs Simmons’s comments came in response to a House of Commons Health Select Committee report on NHS allergy services. The committee said that NHS provision for the treatment of allergy is inadequate.

Allergies affect 30 per cent of the adult population and 40 per cent of children, with anaphylaxis becoming more common. Yet there are serious problems in the provision of allergy services, the report says. Primary care professionals lack training, expertise and incentives to offer services, and services in secondary care are funded by academic, rather than NHS, sources.

Committee members heard evidence from junior health minister, Stephen Ladyman, who said that a huge body of people treated their own allergies using advice from pharmacists and NHS Direct and who were happy with self-medication. Others were treated by GPs who felt competent to do so. A smaller number were referred to specialists and a much smaller number to multiple allergy specialists.

The committee’s report dismisses Dr Ladyman’s evidence as a “benign and evidently theoretical explanation” that was directly contradicted by most of the other evidence. MPs on the committee believe that the frontline of allergy care should be in primary care, but that this cannot happen without an infrastructure of specialist allergy services. The committee recommends a short-term minimum of one specialist centre for each five to seven million people, with two adult allergy consultants and two paediatric allergy consultants and supporting staff. Ultimately, it says that there should be 520 consultant allergists.