Pharmaceutical wholesalers have run out of supplies of hand sanitiser leaving community pharmacies unable to get stocks, The Pharmacist can reveal.
At least three major wholesalers – Lexon UK, McKesson UK and
DE Group – have confirmed they will be unable to supply community pharmacies
for the foreseeable future, in the wake of government advice to use sanitiser
to curb the spread of coronavirus.
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Phoenix Medical Supplies told The Pharmacist they had depleted
their supply earlier this week and hoped to have stock again ‘by the end next
week’.
‘There is not a lot [community pharmacies] can do before
then,’ a Phoenix spokesperson said.
DE Group told The Pharmacist: 'We've not had hand sanitiser for a long time. We’ve
tried but not managed to get in any at all and still can’t.’
McKesson UK,
the parent company of community pharmacy wholesaler AAH Pharmaceuticals, said: '
Unfortunately we are out of stock at the moment. We’re waiting for an order to
come in, but it hasn’t come in so far.’
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Lexon also
said they were unable to source any hand sanitiser, and were ‘not giving dates’
as to how long it would be until supplies came in.
However, pharmacists
said this afternoon (6 March) that they’d been warned by wholesalers they could
face a three-month wait for hand sanitiser.
A spokesperson
for AAH Pharmaceuticals said in a statement: ‘We have recently experienced an
increase in demand for things like hand gels, paracetamol and ibuprofen.
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‘We know
that having access to these products is extremely important to our customers,
so we are doing everything we can to ensure availability, despite the
increasing demand and supply challenges.
‘We are
constantly reviewing our approach to make sure people have access to the
products they need.’
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