Community pharmacy teams have been there with their doors open all through the current COVID-19 pandemic, ready and willing to support everybody looking for clinical and professional help and advice about their health at the rate of more than 48 million consultations per year. They have continued to help people maintain their best health, resolve health-related problems and sort any issues related to medicines. 

Staying available at the front line and providing services in a safe, socially-distanced environment has resulted in unprecedented costs for community pharmacies, costs which the Government has still not agreed to cover. Chronic underfunding is driving many pharmacies towards closure, leaving their communities without the accessible healthcare advice and support that they need. It is not fair that pharmacies should be subsidising the NHS through this public health crisis. 

If pharmacies are funded sustainably then they have so much to offer the NHS and the public: help with preventing ill health and reducing inequalities; support to tackle major health crises such as obesity; and ongoing help through the COVID-19 pandemic, including with the vaccination programme.

Pharmacies have risen to the extraordinary health challenge presented by COVID-19. Patients have relied on this and the NHS has benefited from it. We now need fair funding to keep this critical network from being damaged irreversibly.