Radioisotopes: Imports

(asked on 15th October 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the joint letter of 1 August 2019 from the British Nuclear Medicine Society and the Royal College of Radiologists to the Prime Minister entitled continued supply of medical radioisotopes in the event of a no-deal Brexit, if the NHS will allocate additional funding to NHS trusts to cover increased costs incurred for the supply of medical isotopes in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal.


Answered by
Edward Argar Portrait
Edward Argar
Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 21st October 2019

The Department is doing everything appropriate to prepare for leaving the European Union. We want to reassure patients that our plans should ensure the uninterrupted supply of medicines and medical products, including medical radioisotopes, once we have left the EU.

The Department’s plans include implementing a multi-layered approach to mitigate potential disruption to supply, which consists of stockpiling where possible, securing freight capacity, changing or clarifying regulatory requirements, procuring additional warehousing, working closely with industry to improve trader readiness and putting in place the National Supply Disruption Response to manage potential shortages. Further details can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/medicines-and-medical-products-supply-government-updates-no-deal-brexit-plans.

The supply of medical radioisotopes is being handled by dedicated officials, in collaboration with Devolved Administrations, the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories, as these products have particularly short shelf lives and therefore cannot be stockpiled, as well as having complex transport requirements given the radioactivity involved.

The Department, together with other Government Departments and representatives from industry (suppliers and couriers), has also successfully completed an operational testing exercise to help to ensure the uninterrupted flow of medical radioisotopes if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. This has allowed us to test the resilience of the supply chain arrangements for medical radioisotopes.

Prices of medicines often vary due to a wide variety of factors under normal conditions and there is no evidence that the cost of medicines to the NHS are outside of expected ranges. We will continue to monitor this. The UK Government is working closely with the Devolved Administrations, the NHS and suppliers of medical radioisotopes to monitor the costs of radiopharmaceuticals to the NHS in 2019-20.

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