The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has welcomed the Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s plan to appoint Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) tsar to tackle the medicine shortages.
On Sunday (April 24) Sajid Javid told the Mail that he planned to tackle the problem (shortage of HRT medicine) by appointing a new HRT tsar with the role modelled on that of Kate Bingham, who successfully led the government’s Covid vaccine taskforce.
“The difficulties in accessing HRT medicine have unfairly impacted women’s mental health,” said RPS President, Professor Claire Anderson.
“I look forward to working with this new champion for HRT and the Government on how we can better support women’s health, building on the positive move to reduce prescription charges for HRT for women.”
Anderson also stressed that “the Government should now go further and end unfair prescription charges for patients in England altogether.”
“With continued concerns from patient groups about medicines supply for people with other conditions, this appointment must be part of a wider Government strategy to ensure patient access to medicines.
“Pharmacists spend many hours dealing with medicines shortages when we’d rather be talking to patients about their care. One solution would be to enable pharmacists to make minor changes to a prescription when something is out of stock. This is faster for patients and more efficient for the NHS.”
