Lib Dem party broadcast and diabetes
Discussion
Just seen the Lib Dem party political broadcast this evening, featuring a young lady with Type 1 diabetes. She says vote Lib Dem because insulin is manufactured in the EU, and Brexit will cause shortages.
How?
I work in medical regulatory affairs and 2 people in my family have type 1 diabetes. I see no reason for panic. More a case of inflicting panic, causes panic.
If I told everyone there would be a petrol strike next week. People would panic by and queue until the pumps went dry.
There is no reason to panic about medical supplies, if people act as they always have done.
There is no reason to make less insulin. There is no reason to not send insulin to the UK.
Whatever your political persuasion and view on Brexit, this peddling of panic inducing misinformation is more likely to cause problems than Brexit.
The new EU Medical Device Regulation comes fully into effect May 2020, Brexit or no Brexit. If there is Brexit, the UK will mirror the EU anyway.
Please.....Jo Swinson. Only put correct information into the public domain.
How?
I work in medical regulatory affairs and 2 people in my family have type 1 diabetes. I see no reason for panic. More a case of inflicting panic, causes panic.
If I told everyone there would be a petrol strike next week. People would panic by and queue until the pumps went dry.
There is no reason to panic about medical supplies, if people act as they always have done.
There is no reason to make less insulin. There is no reason to not send insulin to the UK.
Whatever your political persuasion and view on Brexit, this peddling of panic inducing misinformation is more likely to cause problems than Brexit.
The new EU Medical Device Regulation comes fully into effect May 2020, Brexit or no Brexit. If there is Brexit, the UK will mirror the EU anyway.
Please.....Jo Swinson. Only put correct information into the public domain.
Hi
Type 1 diabetic here! This has been discussed a few times in the Brexit threads, and despite all the reassurances I still stockpiled a little insulin at the end of March, end of October.
There are reassurances from drugs companies and the government but I could be in a pretty nasty state after 24 hours without insulin. Therefore, a small stockpile of a months insulin was in order.
Mike
Type 1 diabetic here! This has been discussed a few times in the Brexit threads, and despite all the reassurances I still stockpiled a little insulin at the end of March, end of October.
There are reassurances from drugs companies and the government but I could be in a pretty nasty state after 24 hours without insulin. Therefore, a small stockpile of a months insulin was in order.
Mike
Alucidnation said:
How are people stock piling prescription medication when most pharmacies limit the monthly quantities?
It's surgeries doing the limiting, not pharmacies. And by ordering a new script from the surgery a bit earlier than usual, possibly with an added excuse such as "I'll be away on holiday when it runs out". Generally only works for one month, but that's enough to have a buffer.
TUS373 said:
Just seen the Lib Dem party political broadcast this evening, featuring a young lady with Type 1 diabetes. She says vote Lib Dem because insulin is manufactured in the EU, and Brexit will cause shortages.
How?
I work in medical regulatory affairs and 2 people in my family have type 1 diabetes. I see no reason for panic. More a case of inflicting panic, causes panic.
If I told everyone there would be a petrol strike next week. People would panic by and queue until the pumps went dry.
There is no reason to panic about medical supplies, if people act as they always have done.
There is no reason to make less insulin. There is no reason to not send insulin to the UK.
Whatever your political persuasion and view on Brexit, this peddling of panic inducing misinformation is more likely to cause problems than Brexit.
The new EU Medical Device Regulation comes fully into effect May 2020, Brexit or no Brexit. If there is Brexit, the UK will mirror the EU anyway.
Please.....Jo Swinson. Only put correct information into the public domain.
Not watched the program but having heard Jo S talk about this on many programs and seems to suggests the medication will be stuck in lorry queues on the boarders.How?
I work in medical regulatory affairs and 2 people in my family have type 1 diabetes. I see no reason for panic. More a case of inflicting panic, causes panic.
If I told everyone there would be a petrol strike next week. People would panic by and queue until the pumps went dry.
There is no reason to panic about medical supplies, if people act as they always have done.
There is no reason to make less insulin. There is no reason to not send insulin to the UK.
Whatever your political persuasion and view on Brexit, this peddling of panic inducing misinformation is more likely to cause problems than Brexit.
The new EU Medical Device Regulation comes fully into effect May 2020, Brexit or no Brexit. If there is Brexit, the UK will mirror the EU anyway.
Please.....Jo Swinson. Only put correct information into the public domain.
However medication can be brought in by air not only from the EU but from anywhere in the world by aircraft
Off topic question well slightly, one which I should not the answer to but don't.
We heard a lot about just in time manufacturing and having been in transport I have been under pressure a lot to deliver at a certain time and not to be late. On one occasion my truck caught fire and the guy in the transport office asked is the trailer OK, yes I said then get back in the truck and drive it out from underneath the trailer. This was around the time they decided I had to wear a yellow vest for safety and if I jumped out of the cab and forgot ot I was told off by H&S.
So what happens to production if the motorway is closed, or the ferries are not working or the truck catches fire, A full days production stops?
I used to work as a product manager for a huge European manufacturer of IV medicines, saline, glucose type drips etc.
Production scheduling is a big deal. A company needs adequate stock of medical products to meet forward demand, At the same time, it does not want to overstock because of the shelf lives of products, and money and production unnecessarily tied up.
We sold to the NHS. We had to bid for contracts, many with very short notice to the start. We therefore had to build up stock in case we won and contract, and then run down stock if we did not win it.
Originally, we had production in one factory in the UK. This then expaned to German, France and Norway. We could therefore balance supply and demand over the whole of the EU. Quite an art form, and relied on a hugely complex computer system. It worked. For products like IV bags, production was in the millions per year per product code.
Going back to medical goods and border delays - it is the most sensitive products that are at the greatest theoretical risk e.g. shipping radio active isotopes that have a short shelf life. If they get stuck at the docks for 5 days, then they go 'off'. However, for 99.999% of medical goods, this is unlikely to be a problem, manufacturers have had 3 years to prepare for it, and contigency is built in to planning.
I revert back to my earlier statemement that this element of the Lib Dem's party political broadcast about insulin supply is gross misinformation. I think it is more likely to cause panic. Believe me, Novo Nordisk are a top company, know what they are doing, have many sites over the word, and are still not the only manufacturer of insulin.
I have little time for most politicians and political parties, but feel the need to correct the record (in a non political way) that the Lib Dems are wrong in propogating this.
Production scheduling is a big deal. A company needs adequate stock of medical products to meet forward demand, At the same time, it does not want to overstock because of the shelf lives of products, and money and production unnecessarily tied up.
We sold to the NHS. We had to bid for contracts, many with very short notice to the start. We therefore had to build up stock in case we won and contract, and then run down stock if we did not win it.
Originally, we had production in one factory in the UK. This then expaned to German, France and Norway. We could therefore balance supply and demand over the whole of the EU. Quite an art form, and relied on a hugely complex computer system. It worked. For products like IV bags, production was in the millions per year per product code.
Going back to medical goods and border delays - it is the most sensitive products that are at the greatest theoretical risk e.g. shipping radio active isotopes that have a short shelf life. If they get stuck at the docks for 5 days, then they go 'off'. However, for 99.999% of medical goods, this is unlikely to be a problem, manufacturers have had 3 years to prepare for it, and contigency is built in to planning.
I revert back to my earlier statemement that this element of the Lib Dem's party political broadcast about insulin supply is gross misinformation. I think it is more likely to cause panic. Believe me, Novo Nordisk are a top company, know what they are doing, have many sites over the word, and are still not the only manufacturer of insulin.
I have little time for most politicians and political parties, but feel the need to correct the record (in a non political way) that the Lib Dems are wrong in propogating this.
Edited by TUS373 on Wednesday 27th November 09:13
How do you know they are wrong? What makes you such an expert that you can pronounce with such certainty that this won’t happen? We have no idea how the border crossings will work, as there is no agreement in place currently. Without detail of how these crossings will work nobody can say that there will or won’t be delays.
Keoparakolo said:
How do you know they are wrong? What makes you such an expert that you can pronounce with such certainty that this won’t happen? We have no idea how the border crossings will work, as there is no agreement in place currently. Without detail of how these crossings will work nobody can say that there will or won’t be delays.
Because it suits nobody at all to block imports of insulin from the EU or anywhere else.Hmmmm....not sure what the OP's agenda is here, but our village pharamcist told me he already spends half his time hunting for drugs - the availability of many things is on an absolute knife edge so the slightest thing would bring complete chaos.
As others have said, who knows what's going to happen if we leave. But surely no-one expects the French border staff to be helpful in this regard? The first thing that will happen is that everybody involved in making borders work wil go on strike, as it's a great opportunity for them to apply huge leverage.
As others have said, who knows what's going to happen if we leave. But surely no-one expects the French border staff to be helpful in this regard? The first thing that will happen is that everybody involved in making borders work wil go on strike, as it's a great opportunity for them to apply huge leverage.
Johnnytheboy said:
It will be like the bad old pre-EEC days when there was literally no trade between the UK and mainland Europe.
You mean the trade approach that had built up over centuries and was well practised and refined? We’ll be going from one trade approach to another overnight with very limited time to plan and prepare. Not least as nobody currently knows what they’re planning for. Until there’s clarity on what any deal will look like then nobody can say with any certainty whether there will or won’t be problems. Dr Jekyll said:
Because it suits nobody at all to block imports of insulin from the EU or anywhere else.
It’s not about blocking insulin on its own, there are some other critical medicines too. These are likely to be on different lorries. Nobody knows if they’re going to be stuck in a queue or not, because we don’t know if there’s going to need to be any extra checks. However, if there is a queue, then do these lorries get out to the front? What if everyone just puts a small box of medicine on their lorry to jump the queue and so on. TUS373 said:
Planning. It is a known risk. We got through the millenium bug which was less predictable.[/quote
It’s not a known risk, nobody knows what’s going to happen. Just because you don’t want it to be a problem doesn’t magically make it so.
It’s not a known risk, nobody knows what’s going to happen. Just because you don’t want it to be a problem doesn’t magically make it so.
Sheepshanks said:
Hmmmm....not sure what the OP's agenda is here, but our village pharmacist told me he already spends half his time hunting for drugs - the availability of many things is on an absolute knife edge
Oh yes, he's not lying. I have a page on my order system just for regular out-of-stocks; it varies between about 65 to 75 lines any given day. I've not seen it below 60 lines for several years now. And that's not including the stuff that's actually properly urgent, that we make some real effort to source.
Sheepshanks said:
so the slightest thing would bring complete chaos.
We do try and avoid that... it's the swan effect (hopefully).A few GPs have been frothing at the mouth at the suggestion that pharmacists can now be given the legal power to amend certain things on prescription in times of shortage (for example, giving 2 half strength tablets when the full strength is not available, oh the horror!) - which has been activated once already, recently, in England. I believe no kittens or patients died as a result, despite predictions.
It is of course only the government playing catch-up with the exact sort of things any pharmacy with a decent working relationship with their local surgery/ies has been doing for years anyway ... and will carry on doing through Brexit to keep everything as smooth as possible.
As an aside, I had an A-level student placement lass working with me for a week a few years ago.
After a couple of days, she asked me cautiously "What is exciting about this job?"
I said "Nothing! If it's exciting, it means either something's gone wrong, you've been given a forged prescription, or had a shoplifter. That doesn't mean it can't be satisfying, though..."
Keoparakolo said:
Dr Jekyll said:
Because it suits nobody at all to block imports of insulin from the EU or anywhere else.
It’s not about blocking insulin on its own, there are some other critical medicines too. These are likely to be on different lorries. Nobody knows if they’re going to be stuck in a queue or not, because we don’t know if there’s going to need to be any extra checks. However, if there is a queue, then do these lorries get out to the front? What if everyone just puts a small box of medicine on their lorry to jump the queue and so on. TUS373 said:
Planning. It is a known risk. We got through the millenium bug which was less predictable.[/quote
It’s not a known risk, nobody knows what’s going to happen. Just because you don’t want it to be a problem doesn’t magically make it so.
If these lorries do get stuck then you divert them to airports and fly essentials in like medicines. It’s not a known risk, nobody knows what’s going to happen. Just because you don’t want it to be a problem doesn’t magically make it so.
defblade said:
Sheepshanks said:
Hmmmm....not sure what the OP's agenda is here, but our village pharmacist told me he already spends half his time hunting for drugs - the availability of many things is on an absolute knife edge
Oh yes, he's not lying. I have a page on my order system just for regular out-of-stocks; it varies between about 65 to 75 lines any given day. I've not seen it below 60 lines for several years now. And that's not including the stuff that's actually properly urgent, that we make some real effort to source.
Sheepshanks said:
so the slightest thing would bring complete chaos.
We do try and avoid that... it's the swan effect (hopefully).A few GPs have been frothing at the mouth at the suggestion that pharmacists can now be given the legal power to amend certain things on prescription in times of shortage (for example, giving 2 half strength tablets when the full strength is not available, oh the horror!) - which has been activated once already, recently, in England. I believe no kittens or patients died as a result, despite predictions.
It is of course only the government playing catch-up with the exact sort of things any pharmacy with a decent working relationship with their local surgery/ies has been doing for years anyway ... and will carry on doing through Brexit to keep everything as smooth as possible.
As an aside, I had an A-level student placement lass working with me for a week a few years ago.
After a couple of days, she asked me cautiously "What is exciting about this job?"
I said "Nothing! If it's exciting, it means either something's gone wrong, you've been given a forged prescription, or had a shoplifter. That doesn't mean it can't be satisfying, though..."
I also use an eye medication which was unavailable for 3 months because the one factory which produces it shut down for maintenance. That's one factory for all of Europe...
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