Pharmaceutical service in great britain

Pharmaceutical service in Great Britain is an integral part of the political, economic and social structure of the country. State Health Service system came into being in 1948. Different firms produce numerous medicinal preparations and provide not only the needs of the population but export a large number of medicines to other countries. The main countries of export are: Austria, India, the USA, South Africa, and New Zealand. Great Britain has a reliable system of control over medicinal preparations which includes the processes of pharmacological and clinical tests as well as the stages of production, storing, import and export. All these facts were confirmed by the data of the Health Ministry of Russia. The quality of medicinal preparations imported by Russia from Britain is very high.

The system of state control over medicinal preparations embraces control over quite new medicines and quality control over the medicines which are already used. The quality control is carried out by the Inspection Department. The Inspectors must be specially tested pharmacists, chemists, microbiologists. The main objects of control are: materials, processes, methods of production, equipment, environment and personnel.

The Medicines Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) safeguards public health by ensuring that all medicines on the UK market meet appropriate standards of safety, quality and efficacy. Safety aspects cover harmful effects; quality relates to development and manufacture; and efficacy measures of the beneficial effect of the medicine on patients. The Agency is also responsible for all kinds of information about different remedies; it also has the right to change the classification of remedies.

There are 3 categories of medicinal preparations in the United Kingdom:

1) medicines available for all people (they can be bought in large shops);

2) medicines which are sold only in chemist’s shops;

3) medicines which are sold in chemist’s shops only by the doctor’s prescription.

In fact British Chemist’s shops are commercial enterprises. The number of chemist’s shops is not limited in Great Britain. There are 5 types of them there: 1) private chemist’s shops; 2) chemist’s shops belonging to large firms; 3) those belonging to small companies; 4) those belonging to cooperative societies; 5) hospital chemist’s shops.

The most famous are firm chemist’s shops (Boots), which are members of Alliance Boots, an international pharmacy-led health and beauty group, working in close partnership with manufacturers and pharmacists. Its purpose is to help its customers look and feel better than they ever thought possible. It has close to 2,500 stores from local community pharmacies to large destination health and beauty stores.

There are several leading pharmaceutical companies in the UK. They are Glaxo Wellcome, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, AstraZeneca, Novart etc. They produce new drugs for the treatment of different diseases.

Summary: Pharmaceutical service in Great Britain is a branch of State Health Service System, which is responsible for production and supplying the population with the drugs of high quality.

Exercise 10: Answer the following questions:

1. What can you tell about pharmaceutical service in Great Britain?

2. When did State Health Service System come into existence?

3. What do you know about the system of control over medicinal preparation in the UK?

4. What is MHRA? What is its task?

5. How many categories of medicinal preparation are there in the UK? Tell about them.

6. Can you name the types of chemist’s shops in the UK?

7. What are Boots?

Exercise 11: Make your own short report about pharmaceutical service in the UK.

Exercise 12: You know that many English words are polysemantic. Find equivalents to the following words:

A.

medicine	прицеп для перевозки
treat	достоинство, преимущество
member	талисман, амулет, магия
beauty	угощать, принимать гостей
drug	конечность

B.

beauty sleep	залежалый товар
a drug in the market	преуспеть, иметь во всем успех
carry all before one	ранний сон