Celebrating 30 years of our programme partner, the NPPG

The Medicines for Children team were delighted to join the Neonatal and Paediatric Pharmacy Group (NPPG)’s 30^th conference in Bristol this November. The NPPG is a valued partner for Medicines for Children, together with the RCPCH and the children’s charity WellChild, since when the programme started back in 2006.

At the conference, the Medicines for Children team were excited to share some of our new medicines’ leaflets, new QR code posters and other materials with the NPPG members – paediatric pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. The conference offered a great opportunity to talk with the pharmacy professionals who use our information leaflets with their young patients and families. We also met many people who have worked with us, sharing their expert medicines knowledge, to develop and review medicines leaflets. Most of this work is done by email so it was a fabulous opportunity to meet some of our authors face to face and to thank them personally for all their hard work!

Many NPPG members at the conference volunteered to review existing leaflets and write new medicines leaflets that are still needed by their patients. This includes working with the newly formed NPPG Cardiac Special Interest Group, who we met with at the conference. They are going to develop leaflets on medicines used to treat heart conditions. We are looking forward to this collaboration – with the first two leaflets due to be ready for publication in January.

There were many interesting talks during the conference, including the management of dystonia and spasticity, new treatments for cystic fibrosis, the importance of sleep for poorly children and how this can be improved in hospitals, an in-depth talk on ADHD and medicines safety – including work to standardize to strengths of liquid medicines and to improve pharmacy labels on liquid medicines

Steve Tomlin – a longstanding member of the Medicines for Children board and currently Director of the Children’s Medicines Research and Innovation Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital – gave an interesting talk on what is new in children’s medicine. He raised the following important points:

• Vaccination is vital to prevent several childhood illnesses. Vaccination rates in the UK are lower than they need to be to prevent serious illnesses such as mumps and measles. These illnesses can make children very ill and some children have died from them. We need to increase vaccination rates, as prevention is better than treatment.
• Community Pharmacy and GPs should be the first contact for children with non-serious illnesses. You can read more about the Pharmacy First campaign here. Making better use of care in the community should mean that children are not taken to hospital unnecessarily also means that those who need hospital treatment get seen more quickly.
• Awareness of asthma and its management needs to be improved as outcomes in the UK are some of the worst in Europe. You can find out more about this on the Asthma and lung website.

We would like to thank the NPPG for inviting us to their annual conference and for supporting the work of Medicines for Children for over 18 years.

Steve Tomlin speaking at the NPPG’s conference in Bristol

Some of the Medicines for Children materials available at NPPG