Daily Mail - 12.08.2019

As patients panic amid warning shortage will last until 2020...

GPS DELUGED

IN HRT CRISIS

By Eleanor Hayward, Sophie Borland

and Xantha Leatham

DOCTORS warned last night

of a surge in demand from

women amid an HRT crisis.

GPs said ‘more and more patients are

panicking’ because half of HRT drug

brands are currently out of stock.
The shortage is hitting almost all of the
200,000 British women on HRT and is set to
continue into next year.
On Saturday the Daily Mail revealed the scale
of the problem, which is affecting all high street
pharmacies including Boots and Lloyds.
Frustrated doctors said the shortage was
adding to their workload as they were forced to
spend hours finding alternative treatments.
HRT drugs, administered as patches, pills
or gels, provide the oestrogen that the body
stops producing during the menopause.
Supply chain problems have forced manu-
facturers to stop producing certain brands of
HRT, which has had a ‘domino effect’, causing
shortages of alternatives.
Thousands of women have had to switch
brands in recent weeks, sometimes causing
crippling symptoms including night sweats
and depression to ‘return with a vengeance’.
Leeds GP Dr Richard Vautrey, of the British
Medical Association, said he was expecting
an increase in calls from women this week.
‘That’s always the case whenever there’s a
shortage of any product – people can get
increasingly anxious,’ he said. ‘That’s

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