How close to home is your nearest pharmacy? – words Al Woods

Being able to get to your nearest pharmacy can actually be a big issue when it comes to the crunch. A few months back when our little boy was coughing up blood we took him to the out of hours clinic.

We were prescribed some medicine but the health centre’s own pharmacy was shut as it was a Sunday. An epic quest for the much needed medicine then ensued.

The town we live in is a small Pennine market town. We drove to the nearest large town Rochdale but all the pharmacies there were shut too. We had to go online and eventually we found one that was open but it was a long journey to get some much needed medicine.

That’s the problem. As a recent research study has found, if you live in the centre of London you’ll be able to find a pharmacy at any time of the day or week relatively easily. If you live though in a small village miles from the nearest town or city then you could find yourself in trouble should you need to urgently get hold of some medicine. On top of that access to a pharmacy varies massively from town to town and even city to city.

Online pharmacy company Pharmacy2U has analysed the location of 10,297 GP practices, and all their respective pharmacy outlets (over 60,000 in total), to determine the average distance that people must travel in order to pick up their medical prescriptions.

In London on average the study found it was only a 2.6-mile journey where as in Plymouth it was 7.5 miles. The worst region was the South West in at 6.6 miles on average. These distances matter if you find yourself in the situation we were in. How do I find a pharmacy near me open 24 hours? It counts when you need that medicine for somebody who is really in need.

You can see the full findings here: www.pharmacy2u.co.uk/news/picking-up-prescriptions

How close to home is your nearest pharmacy? – words Al Woods