Pharmacies at risk of another Dr Shipman, warns expert

IRELAND’S liberal pharmacy market could be exploited by someone like Dr Harold Shipman, who obtained large quantities of controlled drugs and used them to kill victims, a British pharmaceutical expert warned yesterday.

Director of Fitness to Practice and Legal Affairs in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB), Mandie Lavin, said Irish legislators had important lessons to learn from the Shipman Inquiry.

She pointed out that the RPSGB now ensured that British pharmacy owners were fit to own and manage a pharmacy, and could remove a pharmacist found to have acted in an unprofessional manner.