The MHRA has averted a UK drugs shortage by temporarily relaxing new European rules on importing pharmaceutical ingredients.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) praised the MHRA's decision to temporarily allow manufacturers to continue to import ingredients from countries that could not prove they had met EU standards and said the medicines regulator had ensured the supply of drugs would not be disrupted.

Countries exporting pharmaceutical ingredients to the EU must obtain a certificate to show they have complied with EU standards, under European Commission legislation that came into force yesterday (July 2).

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	Implementing the new rules had been more problematic than expected and the MHRA's contingency plan would prevent a shortage of ingredients from India and China, who had decided to issue their own letters of compliance, ABPI technical affairs manager Mike Murray said.

"All parties are striving to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and we very much welcome the approach adopted by the MHRA in the interim," he told C+D.

Last month, the MHRA announced that, if UK manufacturers were worried that countries from which they imported ingredients would not have a certificate in time, they could vouch that their manufacturing sites within the country had been inspected within the past three years and met with EU guidance.

Mr Murray said the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) had called on other EU states to adopt a similar approach to avoid unnecessary drugs shortages.

Switzerland, the USA, Australia and Japan have been added to a list of nations who do not require a certificate. Other countries, such as India and China, have set up their own systems to issue letters of confirmation.

These systems had only been set up recently and it could take some time before the countries were able to produce a letter for each ingredient they manufactured, Mr Murray added.

C+D has launched a petition as part of its Sort Out Stocks campaign, calling for the government to accept that prescription medicine shortages are still a problem for both pharmacists and patients in the UK. Pharmacists can back the campaign and sign the petition here.