RURAL PHARMACY
Pharmacy future creating concern in rural areas
Pharmacy contractor, Paul Hughes (left) with Howard Thornton, Chairman of Fermanagh & Omagh District Council
IF ANY MORE PROOF WAS NEEDED THAT RURAL PHARMACY IN NORTHERN IRELAND IS BEING GRADUALLY DECIMATED, THEN YOU NEED GO NO FURTHER THAN WHAT WAS ONCE THE PICTURESQUE VILLAGE OF NEWTOWNBUTLER. PIF TOOK A TOUR OF THE QUASI ‘GHOST TOWN’ WITH LOCAL PHARMACY CONTRACTOR, PAUL HUGHES.
E
veryone connected with community pharmacy in Northern Ireland is well aware
of the current difficulties. The province's pharmacists have never faced such an array of challenges, and many fear for the future. The rural pharmacy sector is particularly badly affected.
Newtownbutler is a small village in County Fermanagh, which borders County Monaghan. According to the 2011 census, the village is home to just under 1000 people.
According to Wikipedia, ‘the parish currently has two pubs, An Chead Chumann and Mulligans Bar and Lounge, which regularly host an array of events and attract crowds in from across the country. The village also has two shops, two takeaways, a butcher’s, a chemist, a credit union, a parish hall, a community centre, GAA grounds and a large community park up the town.’
4 - PHARMACY IN FOCUS
Eh, well no, actually, it doesn’t… As I stand in the village’s only street, surveying the landscape with Paul Hughes, he gives me the lowdown on the current state of play.
‘This High Street that we’re looking at now,’ Paul tells me, ‘used to boast an array of businesses, including a hotel, a hairdresser’s, a convenience store and a bank. We also had two pubs, a butcher’s shop, a beautician’s and a haulage company.’
‘Over the last ten years, the convenience store closed, although we now have a small Spar store. One of the pubs is also running on reduced hours. The village has been totally decimated. I have had this pharmacy here for 30 years and I’ve never seen things so bad.’
(Since my visit to the village, the butcher’s has also closed.)
And things are evidently going to get worse.
The local GP surgery, which lies at the far end of the village was refurbished ten years ago but, since the resident GP retired a year ago, the surgery has been run on a temporary basis by GPs from the Lisnaskea Health Centre on a reduced-hours basis. A new health centre is planned for Lisnaskea in two or three years’ time and, once that is in place, Paul Hughes believes that the GP surgery in Newtownbutler will close completely.
‘At a time when we are watching our pharmacy colleagues across the water being funded to provide an increasing number of clinical services, it is absolutely soul destroying to see the result of the lack of investment in infrastructure in rural and border areas,’ he says.
‘This area in particular has one of the highest levels of social deprivation in Northern Ireland, and we have a lot of patients, who are receiving Disability Living Allowance.
‘I’ll give you an example of how difficult it is for patients here. If you wanted to go to Lisnaskea, then you need to get two buses during the working day, and, with the current bus timetables, it could be a good two or three-hour journey just to do a round trip. When you think of a young mum with a pram and maybe a couple of other kids, or someone who has bad mobility problems, then you can see how easily people can become isolated – and that in itself can lead to a raft of health problems – mental health problems in particular.
‘The Lisnaskea GPs come down four days a week to run a satellite surgery, so I pick up scripts every day at 9am in Lisnaskea and also provide a delivery service. From where we are located, it’s three miles to the Cavan border, and three miles to Clones and the Monaghan border, so we’re doing business on both sides of the
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