Woman embezzled money from village pharmacy

A woman who was found guilty of embezzling £4,000 from a shop in Scalloway has been placed under supervision and given an unpaid work sentence, Shetland News reports.

Emma Warwick, of Gordon Cottage, Levenwick, was previously found to have taken the money from Norsepharm on Scalloway’s Main Street between 12 December 2014 and 27 February 2015 while she was working there.

The 25 year old said during a trial that she had concerns about her employer’s security arrangements and wanted to teach them a lesson by taking the cash before ultimately returning it.

She previously said that she signed for a delivery of £4,000 from the Post Office that was meant to replenish the shop’s cash reserves before claiming it went missing.

Tenby pharmacy holds asthma clinics to raise awareness of proper inhaler techniques

The Evans Pharmacy group is launching a series of in-house support clinics to offer asthma suffers advice and guidance on proper inhaler technique, the Tenby Observer reports.

The former minister for Health & Social Services, Jane Hutt AM, has shown her support for the campaign aimed at reducing asthma attacks and hospital admissions.

Pharmacies in Tenby that will be offering the service as part of the asthma awareness month are the Seafront Pharmacy on High Street and the Glen Pharmacy on Gas Lane, The Norton.

Anyone suffering from asthma can simply drop into the clinics during opening hours and be tested for proper inhaler use.

Record amount of fake Viagra seized

More unlicensed erectile dysfunction drugs were seized in the UK by the authorities last year than ever before - worth more than £11m, the BBC reports.

The Victoria Derbyshire programme joined a raid to find out why they are a problem.

The market for unlicensed Viagra is huge and most of it heads for the internet, where pills are sold for £2 to £3 each.

These tend to be imitations or a generic Indian version of the drug - Kamagra - which are shipped to the UK in bulk, packaged up and posted on.

Mixed reaction to granting of permission for Day Lewis Pharmacy in St Day

A village surgery's strategic manager has branded the decision to allow a controversial pharmacy to open in St Day as a pyrrhic victory for the giant, West Briton reports.

An appeal challenging the granting of permission to allow a Day Lewis Pharmacy to open in the village fell on deaf ears when on Tuesday, The NHS Litigation Authority (LA) approved an application by Day Lewis Pharmacy to open an NHS community pharmacy.

A statement said: "The NHS LA Pharmacy Appeals Committee was satisfied that granting the application would confer significant benefits on persons in the area of the relevant Health and Wellbeing Board which were not foreseen when the Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment was published and, that these significant benefits would secure improvements or better access to pharmaceutical services.”

Government urged to reconsider planned cuts to community pharmacies

A council chief is calling on the Department of Health to reconsider planned cuts to community pharmacies, over fears it could lead to dozens of rural and suburban sites closing, Kent News reports.

Graham Gibbens, cabinet member for public health and adult social care at Kent County Council, is writing on behalf of the council to express concerns about a current consultation which proposes a six per cent cut.

Council members say it would have a considerable impact on access to pharmaceutical services, in particular those that serve rural villages, and to specific members of the population such as the vulnerable and elderly.

It’s believed over a quarter of Kent’s 280 pharmacies could be affected adversely by the proposal, leading to reductions in services and even closures.

Computer glitch may have led to incorrect prescription of statins

Health regulators have launched an investigation after it emerged that patients may have been inappropriately put on statins or taken off them as a result of a computer error, The Guardian reports.

Pulse magazine revealed there has been a bug in a computer system used by someGPs to determine a patient’s risk, meaning some people have had their risk of cardiovascular disease miscalculated.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has contacted GPs to let them know there has been an error in the SystmOne clinical IT software since 2009.

But the regulator said that only a limited number of patients may have been affected by the glitch in the system, manufactured by IT company TPP. It also stressed that the risk to patients was low.