Great Britain

Community pharmacies in Wales to receive 4% funding uplift

Jeremy Miles, Welsh cabinet secretary for health and social care, said the 4% funding increase for community pharmacy equates to an additional £7m in 2025/2026, which is almost a 30% increase in funding compared with 2016/2017.…

APPG calls for Pharmacy First to be national walk-in service

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pharmacy’s report on the future of community pharmacy in England warned that “without urgent reform, patients will lose access to vital services”.…

Four in ten patients cannot have pharmacy consultations added to their records

Exclusive: An analysis conducted by The Pharmaceutical Journal has found that between October 2024 and September 2025, 70–75% of patient record updates sent to GP practices by pharmacies using CegedimRx were rejected by their system.…

New HIV diagnoses fall by almost 20% in one year

Public Health Wales data show that the number of new HIV cases fell to 73 in 2024, from 91 confirmed cases in 2023.…

The role of pharmacy in delivering the NHS ten-year health plan

Attendees at a roundtable hosted by The Pharmaceutical Journal agreed that effective horizon scanning is needed to establish what the pressures on the health service would be in a decade’s time and the need for pharmacy organisations to work together to help shape the future.…

NHS pay rise above 2.5% would mean ‘trade-offs’ in its health commitments, government says

In evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body, the Department of Health and Social Care said that a pay rise above 2.5% “would inevitably have an impact on healthcare delivery”.…

TB treatment can be resumed following ‘significant improvement’ in antimicrobial supply

The Scottish government said that available licensed stock and unlicensed imports of antimicrobial medicines “should be optimised to ensure continuity of patient treatment”.…

NHS England tells care boards to ‘maximise’ Pharmacy First in planning guidance

Under NHS England’s multi-year planning framework, integrated care boards must also introduce prescribing-based services into community pharmacies in 2026/2027.…

More than one-third of people in Scotland used Pharmacy First in 2024/2025

A report by Public Health Scotland also revealed that in 2024/2025, the number of people who used Pharmacy First Scotland at least once in year increased by more than 50% compared with 2021/2022.…

First street drug-checking service approved in Scotland

Users of the service — to open at the site where ‘The Thistle’ drug consumption room is located — will be able to submit drugs for testing and receive harm-reduction advice alongside the results.…