Cancer patients in the UK dealing with 'worst drug shortage' as sufferers forced to skip meals and ration doses of their medication
Cancer patients are skipping meals, rationing doses and travelling more than 30 miles to get hold of medication amidst the 'worst ever' drug stock shortage, pharmacists have warned.
A new survey has found that an astonishing 96 per cent of pharmacies are struggling to supply their patients with a crucial cancer drug called Creon.
Thousands of Britons who have suffered pancreas cancer rely on the tablets to help them digest food. However, Creon has been in short supply in the UK for over a year.
Without the drug, patient are at-risk of malnutrition and dangerous weight loss.
According to the National Pharmacy Association, which carried out the survey, pharmacists have described the Creon shortage as the 'worst stockage shortage' they have ever had to deal with.
As a result, patients are reportedly spending hours hunting stock, 'tightly rationing their medication' and even eating just one meal a day to eke out their Creon, the survey revealed.
Creon is just one of dozens of crucial medicines that have been hard to access since the Covid pandemic, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT), antibiotics and inhalers.
Research suggests that more than half of patients have struggled to have their prescriptions met over the past year.
As part of its End The Drug Shortage Nightmare campaign, The Mail on Sunday has called on the Government to give pharmacists the power to make substitutions for patients when drugs are out of stock and to force manufacturers to give advance warning of known shortages or face fines.
We also believe there should be a database for patients to check which pharmacies have drugs in stock – and we say all NHS patients should be allowed to use well-stocked hospital pharmacies to source critical medicines.
Alfie Bailey-Bearfield, of Pancreatic Cancer UK, called the survey findings 'deeply worrying' and said they 'echo the distress and frustration [it is] hearing from patients…across the UK'
'Thousands of people affected by pancreatic cancer rely on taking PERT tablets every time they eat simply to digest their food and absorb nutrients – something most of us take for granted,' he said.
'It's totally unacceptable that they are still taking desperate measures that put their health, wellbeing and their eligibility for treatment at risk.'
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