Pharmacists are reporting UK-wide shortages of the antibiotics used to treat strep A, despite the health secretary insisting that the government is not aware of a problem.
Demand for penicillin and amoxicillin has gone up in recent days, as the number of cases of strep A has risen among children in schools. Independent pharmacies are unable to replenish stock of antibiotics because wholesalers say there is no availability.
Steve Barclay, the health secretary, told Times Radio on Wednesday that doctors were not aware of any shortages and that medicine manufacturers were required to notify us if there are shortages, and that pharmacists across the country were reporting they could not restock many types of antibiotics, and were dealing with angry customers who had been misled by the health secretary.
The government can say anything they want but they are on the frontline and we know what is going on, she said. I want to make it clear that healthcare professionals don't want to let their patients down, we have people coming in, parents, we just need to have better planning. The government has to act now because of the close relationship between our hands. She said that patients were visiting 12 pharmacies to try to find one of the antibiotics used to treat strep A.
Hannbeck said that there was a broader systemic problem of regular drug shortages, exemplified by the HRT shortage earlier in the year.
We find ourselves in situations like this when demand goes up and we can't get the supply we need. It is becoming a norm and it is very difficult for healthcare professionals on the frontline to manage this, especially when the government says there is supply, so they should just say that they are looking into making sure pharmacies are getting it. She said pharmacies had repeatedly asked the Department of Health and Social Care to bring wholesalers and manufacturers together around a table to discuss how to prevent future shortages, but had been rebuffed.
She believes that raw materials bottlenecks due to coronaviruses in east Asia are responsible for the shortages.
Dr Andrew Hill, a drugs expert at Liverpool University, said amoxicillin was in a shortage worldwide, with health authorities in France, Spain, US, Canada and Australia reporting a lack of supply, due to recent waves of different infections. Strep A is a common infection in children, and can cause scarlet fever, strep throat, and bacteria can get into the bloodstream and lungs, leading to sepsis.
Antibiotic treatment is usually prescribed in more serious cases due to concerns around antibiotic resistance. Recent guidance has asked GPs to be especially vigilant for strep A, which may mean they are more likely to prescribe antibiotics.
In areas where there had been a surge in demand, there were well-established procedures for moving stock around our wholesale depots, and they said they were not aware of any shortages, but sometimes you get the peaks of demand in a certain area, and stock has moved around accordingly.