I was absolutely shocked to hear on Radio 4 that there is no national database for tracking where drugs go after they have got as far as the pharmacy. Once it's in a patient's hands, that's it - no record is kept of who gets which batch of a particular drug. This means that if there is a recall, there's no easy way to contact patients who may be affected. Perhaps the government could spend some time and money tracking the batch numbers of medicines from supplier to patient, instead of spying on us.