That the COVID-19 pandemic did not lead to any specific medicines shortages is a lucky accident – private industry had prepared buffer stocks to deal with the fallout of Brexit, which absorbed potential supply chain disruptions. Now that these stocks have been exhausted and left unreplenished, experts suggest that we are in a worse position to respond to biological threats now than when COVID-19 first reached our shores. When the next pandemic reaches Britain’s shores, we will not benefit from this fortunate slack in the supply chain.
This report, informed by extensive cross-sectoral stakeholder engagement, outlines how the UK Government can best marshall limited resources to increase supply chain resilience, both mitigating catastrophic biological events and alleviating the daily stresses on the healthcare system.
We propose 5 recommendations to strengthen the resilience of the UK’s supply chains:
- Devise a Government strategy: the Department for Business and Trade, in partnership with the Department for Health and Social Care, should produce a strategy for the supply of critically important medical countermeasures.
- Increase supply chain visibility and transparency by requiring real-time supply chain visibility from manufacturers, and co-investing financial and human capital in the development of a platform that enhances supply chain visibility.
- Diversify the supply of materials and subcomponents in medical countermeasures by leveraging the Government’s procurement power to mandate multiple sourcing of all components critical for medical countermeasures.
- Bolster life sciences manufacturing in the UK and partner nations, making the most of the economic and resilience co-benefits of reshoring the production of medical countermeasures and their subcomponents to the greatest extent possible.
- Leverage the Government’s convening power to create a “stockpiling taskforce” composed of key stakeholders to answer the most pressing questions around stockpiling.
Concerted action to boost supply chain resilience for medical countermeasures is needed now to prevent deaths in the future. Our report aims to support the UK Government in developing an urgently needed, holistic approach to addressing vulnerabilities in these supply chains.
The best time to bolster UK supply chain resilience for medical countermeasures was yesterday. The second best time is now.
To read the full report, please click ‘Download’ below.
For all queries related to this report, please contact paul-enguerrand@longtermresilience.org
