Warning that medicine supply into Northern Ireland post-Brexit ‘high risk area’

The chief pharmaceutical officer, Cathy Harrison, has warned that without mitigation, the supply of medical devices and medicines into Northern Ireland would be considered a ‘very high risk area’ post-Brexit.

The pharmaceutical industry has a one-year period of grace to make preparations. Until this year, there has been no separate supply chain for Northern Ireland and it has been treated as part of the UK supply chain.

Ms Harrison has said an “enormous amount of work” was being done in the area, adding “Without us taking action, and without a very proactive approach being taken, and if we did nothing at all until the end of this year, then there would be a high level of risk and it would be considered a very high risk area.

“However, there’s an enormous amount of work going on to avoid that. Ahead of the overall transition of the UK from the EU, there was a massive amount of work done with the medical supply chains. That’s really now standing us in good stead.”

Following the news, a Department of Health official said “The options around the continuation or not of the Cross Border Healthcare Directive in the immediate term are to be provided to the minister imminently and those options will be considered before any announcements are made.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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