The nationwide shortage, which the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) says is a “European-wide” supply issue, has forced the 63-year-old and his wife to spend time travelling to different pharmacies in a bid to get the medication.<\/p>\n
He said: “I know it sounds dramatic, but without it you will just fade away…it’s very scary.”<\/p>\n
Mr Elcombe also had a third of his stomach removed during the operation, alongside his gallbladder and part of his small intestine.<\/p>\n
He said he had a hugely depleted supply of Creon despite reducing his intake from the intended 24 tablets to just eight a day.<\/p>\n
This limits what he can consume because the 63-year-old can’t eat without it. <\/p>\n
He added: “You’re never 100% after your operation. The fatigue you get is chronic; not eating makes it worse.”<\/p>\n
Mr Elcombe said the shortage – which has become worse this year – was not expected to lift until December 2026.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the DHSC said: “We know how frustrating and distressing medicine supply issues can be for patients and the clinicians caring for them.<\/p>\n
“The European-wide supply issues with Creon are caused by a limited availability of raw ingredients and manufacturing capacity constraints.<\/p>\n
“We are working closely with industry and the NHS to mitigate the impact on patients and resolve the issues as quickly as possible.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nationwide shortage, which the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) says is a “European-wide” supply issue,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4315],"tags":[105,4326,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-159499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-medication","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114629326015973524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}