{"id":543333,"date":"2026-06-19T10:32:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T10:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/543333\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T10:32:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T10:32:06","slug":"the-patients-paying-the-price-for-the-uks-drug-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/543333\/","title":{"rendered":"The patients paying the price for the UK\u2019s drug shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sadly, Bartlett is far from alone. Indeed, she is one of many people in Britain living with serious long-term health conditions, ranging from chronic pain to hypertension, thyroid conditions and degenerative diseases, who are struggling to get hold of vital medications. Recent estimates suggest that there are around 120 drugs in short supply in the UK, ranging from propranolol, a beta blocker used to treat migraines, to medicines for blood pressure and epilepsy.<\/p>\n

The crisis is so bad, in fact, that industry leaders this week said the current shortages<\/a> are the worst GPs and pharmacists have ever seen, warning of a serious risk to patient safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur medicines market has never been so volatile, with patients and primary care colleagues at the sharp end of events outside of their control,\u201d said Olivier Picard, the chairman of the National Pharmacy Association (NPA).<\/p>\n

Indeed, solutions are not easy to come by with the shortages caused by issues ranging from conflict in the Middle East<\/a> to the UK\u2019s relatively low budget for medicines compared with other EU countries. The former has made the supply chains of crucial ingredients more volatile, creating bottlenecks in the production lines of various medications, while the latter means that when a particular drug is in short supply, nations who are willing to pay more for it are prioritised.<\/p>\n

In other cases, changing prescribing habits have also placed greater pressure on supply chains, for example, with hormone replacement therapy (HRT), where doctors have increasingly pivoted away from tablets towards patches and gels.<\/p>\n

The consequences of shortages can be drastic. \u201cEven short delays in taking medication can affect talking, walking and swallowing,\u201d says Rowan Wathes, associate director of policy and health strategy at the charity Parkinson\u2019s UK. \u201cIn the worst cases, the deterioration of symptoms is irreversible.\u201d<\/p>\n

And despite the situation in the Middle East cooling in recent weeks, Wathes says the charity\u2019s helpline is still hearing from a growing number of people saying that they are struggling to obtain co-careldopa, the most commonly prescribed medication for managing the symptoms of the disease.<\/p>\n

Because of this, some patients<\/a> have begun attempting to secure supplies in advance where possible. \u201cIt\u2019s terrifying, because if I don\u2019t get those meds, I\u2019m stuffed,\u201d says Chris Henry, a 49-year-old father of four, from Wells in Somerset who was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson\u2019s five years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI now tend to get two months of meds at a time. If everybody starts doing that, there\u2019s going to be more of a problem, but not having co-careldopa would be the equivalent of saying to a diabetic, you haven\u2019t got any insulin. It would stop me working, stop me functioning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sadly, Bartlett is far from alone. Indeed, she is one of many people in Britain living with serious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[275],"tags":[99378,718,18,135,475,474,19,17,5,197912,201257,2900,1702,172075],"class_list":["post-543333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-daily-features","tag-drugs","tag-eire","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-nhs-national-health-service","tag-other-features","tag-pharmaceuticals","tag-standard","tag-us-content"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116776320721466425","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}