Diabetic prepared to die for Brexit

Sonic67

If we can do this at short notice:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                More than 70 jets to rescue 16,500 stranded Thomas Cook passengers today                                                                                                        It will take two weeks to bring all 150,000 Thomas Cook holidaymakers back in the biggest peacetime repatriation ever                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                www.mirror.co.uk                                                                               
How come we can't fly in medicine?

Bl4ckGryph0n

Which drugs have this short shelf life that you are referring to?

Insulin will last for 28 days at room temperature (or from when opened).

Refrigerated it will last until its expiry date. How long is that you might wonder? Well at the weekend I picked up my latest prescription and I just had a look.

Humulin - October....... Oh that's not good. No wait. October 2021

And my other insulin I take, Humalog - July 2021

If we end up with lorries carrying insulin that are delayed for two years then we might have problems.

Bl4ckGryph0n

Drugs are not the only thing needed in the NHS.
This essential item has an extremely short shelf life and cannot be stockpiled.

Unlike many medicines, radioactive isotopes cannot be stockpiled. As soon as they are produced they begin to decay. The longer the delay, the smaller the dose of useful isotope that remains.

Technetium-99m (99mTc). This extremely useful element has a half-life of just six hours, and so is transported to hospitals and radiopharmacies in the form of ‘technetium-99m generators’. These devices contain the decaying parent element, molybdenum-99 (99Mo) which has a half-life of sixty-six hours.

Approximately one million UK patients each year rely on radioisotope procedures. The UK is not self-sufficient in these materials, importing around 80% of the medical radioisotopes we use. Most of these come from the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.

Dr Dickson noted that if imported radioisotopes suffered delays then “the guarantee of supply will not be there and what comes out at the other end will not be, essentially, what we paid for. f you delay that at customs or through border issues, you have paid for 100 but you get 50 doses. You therefore cannot treat patients adequately…and you are incurring a massive cost for the NHS”.

Dr Dickson also cast doubt on the government’s plan to transport radioisotopes into the country by air, pointing to the lack of specialist handlers and airport capacity.
Medical Radioisotopes and No-Deal Brexit

Since the UK has no reactors capable of producing Mo-99, British hospitals have so far relied on weekly supplies by lorry from reactors in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Five nuclear reactors in Europe provide around 60% of the world’s production of Mo-99, which is used to produce Technetium 99, the most widely used diagnostic isotope.
BMA Euratom and ensuring the continued uninterrupted cross-border supply of nuclear materials, including for medical use, post-Brexit

Also falling into the short shelf life/no stockpiling category are most radioisotopes for oncology.
The UK also imports Radium-223 from Norway to treat bone tumours, Iodine-123 from Belgium to treat thyroid cancer, and both Iridium-192 to treat cervical and prostate cancer, and Lutetium-177, to treat neuroendocrine tumours, from the Netherlands.

“The problem is, our supply chains are built around lorries from the Channel,” Dickson says. “It would take a substantial, expensive and time-consuming process to reorganise all those supply chains, but we can’t consider the process until we have a clear picture on the post-Brexit deal.”
Brexit's latest no-deal crisis? Decaying radioactive medicine

Iodine 123 - Half life 13.2 hours
Lutetium-177 - half Life 6.7 days
Radium 223 - half life 11.4 days
Iridium-192 - half life 74 days

SteakAndCake

Well done, you've found something which does have a short shelf life.

Any reason we can't just fly it in? We are talking about things that have relatively little usage and in small quantities too.

Meanwhile, do you accept that diabetics have nothing to worry about, contrary to the scare stories that keep being pushed?

SteakAndCake

So one crash on a motorway today what happens?

Sonic67

I used to work for Eli Lilly, primarily CNS related and Health Economics later on...Anyway, Lilly distributed Humulin before the EU was established...And if I recall correctly we did to 152 countries around the world.

So besides your excellent points, people seem to forget we managed to do this before.

doug56hl

So they produce 60% for the world...yet somehow can't get it to the UK across the pond after Brexit? Seriously dude, you are falling for that kind of stuff?

Sure, there will be changes required but that can be overcome. Perhaps also a good opportunity to invest and get our own production going in parallel.

doug56hl

Like saying, people die in car crashes anyway so why wear seat belts.  

You're right, there will always be unpreventable issues to supply chain. Nobody is arguing this isn't so. People are simply saying, is the risk of deliberately introducing risk that *may* result in death worth the perceived and as yet intangible benefits that Brexit will deliver?

Bl4ckGryph0n

Who's going to invest in that?  All that upstart cost to serve just the UK market because attempting to serve the EU market will place any UK based company at a severe disadvantage behind established EU producers with easier access to international markets.

EarthRod

And others are saying this is all just project fear as an attempt to stop Brexit.