The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7460 p45
14 July 2007

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• White Paper
• Pfizer (2)
• Supervision (2)
• Community pharmacy (2)
• Antimicrobials
• Dispensing errors
• Recalls
• Onlooker
• CPPE
• Recycling
• Retention fee

Letters to the Editor

Recalls

Class 1 alerts

From Mr I. Holloway, MRPharmS

Anne Rickard (PJ, 7 July, p19) suggested that it is unacceptable to fax class 1 recalls to hospitals at a busy time of the week. We have always taken the position that only class 1 alerts are sent out on Fridays and all other classes are withheld until the following Monday.

Public safety has to be considered paramount. I take exception to the comment that this is a frequent occurrence. We have sent out eight class 1 drug alerts in this calendar year but only two of these have been on a Friday.

Drug alerts have to be distributed to many other groups in addition to hospitals and more than one distribution system has to be used. In addition to hospitals, we had to fax to overseas regulators, UK wholesalers and use Public Health Link to contact primary care as well as posting the information on the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency website. In all the recent cases we distributed to hospitals first to try to minimise the local impact.

Ian Holloway
Manager
MHRA Defective Medicines Report Centre

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