News

UK GPs to prescribe Scottish Take Home Naloxone kits

17 October 2011

GPs across the UK will soon be able to prescribe life-saving injecting kits pioneered nationally by Scotland’s ground-breaking Take Home Naloxone programme.

Scottish Drugs Forum has learned that the UK Medicines and Health Care Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has agreed to licence the programme’s customised naloxone emergency injecting kits – a move essential for GPs to be able to prescribe them.

The move - actively supported by Scottish Drugs Forum – should mean more patients being able to access these kits, with the ultimate aim of reducing the number of drug deaths.

Scotland’s drug-related deaths are reducing - dropping to 485 in 2010 - but it still has among the highest rate per head of population in Europe.

The Scottish Take Home Naloxone Kit consists of:

  • A yellow plastic box (due to change to a white opaque box soon)
  • A pre filled syringe
  • 2 x 23 gauge 1 1/4 inch muscle needles
  • Patient Information Leaflet

Nurses and pharmacists in Scotland can already prescribe and dispense the Scottish Naloxone Programme’s kits if they are supplying them under area health board regulations, called Patient Group Directions.

Scottish Drugs Forum – which delivers training for the Scottish Government-funded Scottish Naloxone Programme - has been at the forefront of talks which led to Martindale Pharma, a naloxone manufacturer, applying to the MHRA for permission to produce the complete Scottish THN kits.

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