16 2GM Saturday April 30 2022 | the times
News
are things we shouldn’t have to be fight-
ing tooth and nail for.”
Saynor, 46, said she was glad to see
women kicking up a fuss “because it
was something our parents and their
generation didn’t talk about. There’s an
inherent distrust of women’s under-
standing of their own bodies.”
She and her husband drove miles
around Hertfordshire, Cambridge-
shire, Bedfordshire and Essex before
finding a bottle of Oestrogel in the 14th
pharmacy they visited, just before clos-
ing time, somewhere near St Neots.
“The pharmacist at Tesco told me
they get 50 [bottles] in every two days,
but they had all gone within the first
hour,” she said. Saynor found alterna-
tives to Oestrogel in various pharma-
cies, but did not have the correct pre-
scription. When she tried her GP sur-
gery to change it, she was told her call
“wasn’t deemed urgent”.
Pharmacists have asked the govern-
ment to allow them to make minorchanges to prescriptions for a suitable
alternative when something is out of
stock, saying it would be a “gamechang-
er” for patients.
Poorer women who could not afford
to buy HRT privately would suffer most
from the disruption, said Claire Hat-
trick, founder of ClipboardClaire, a
website offering menopause support,
and author of Menopause: Before, Dur-
ing, After, who suffered chronic joint
pain while raising her twins as a single
parent.
“When you’re already struggling to
afford gas, electricity and food bills, it
will be mum’s HRT that will be the first
to go,” she said.
Dr Juliet Balfour, a Somerset-based
GP with specialist training in meno-
pausal health, urged women to go to
their GPs armed with factsheets from
the website of Women’s Health Con-
cern, the patient arm of the British
Menopause Society.
“There are other options but it’s actu-ally quite difficult to work out the
equivalent doses for different oestro-
gen products, so people are potentially
going to be giving themselves too much
or too little [when they change over]. If
GPs haven’t had much extra training on
menopause, it’s quite difficult for them
to work out equivalent dosage as well.
So I’m recommending patients to talk
to their doctor with the chart in their
hands.”
Tanya Barrow, 52, a blogger from
Hampshire, said she was having to take
matters into her own hands as she
could not get a doctor’s appointment
for another prescription until next
month.
“I am, very sadly, going to a friend’s
funeral in south London and have ar-
ranged to meet another friend in a car
park to get some Oestrogel first,” she
said. “She’s found the patches have
worked better before so we’re swap-
ping.”
Additional reporting by Georgina FullerHormone replacement therapy is to be
rationed so that women cannot be pre-
scribed more than three months of the
drugs at a time.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is-
sued “serious shortage protocols” for
three brands of HRT in short supply —
Oestrogel, Ovestin and Premique —
last night, to prevent hoarding.
Javid said: “I want to reassure women
I have listened to their concerns and
will not hesitate to take decisive action
to ensure they can access the HRT they
need. We will leave no stone unturned
in our national mission to boost supply
of HRT and this next step will ensure
women across the UK will be able to re-
liably access this vital medication.”
Women have been forced to resort to
desperate measures to access the medi-
cation, which can alleviate debilitating
menopausal symptoms.
For Vicky Saynor, this meant driving
around 14 pharmacies across four
counties before bagging a bottle of
Oestrogel. It was the last one left there.
Claire Johnson snapped up some
leftover patches from a friend. They
were a different brand from her own,
and out of date but she “ripped into
them like a crack addict”.
Tanya Barrow plans to stop off on her
way to a funeral, meeting a friend in a
car park so she can swap patches in
return for some gel to keep her debili-
tating symptoms at bay.
They are among the million women
in Britain who rely on hormone re-
placement therapy (HRT) every day to
function and they are appalled by na-
tionwide shortages that they say have
forced them to source medication
through informal networks instead.
Prescriptions for HRT have more
than doubled in England over the past
five years as awareness of its benefits
has grown, but the demand appears to
have taken the government and phar-
maceutical companies by surprise, with
the firm behind Oestrogel, one of the
most common HRT products, strug-
gling to supply enough of the rub-on
gel. This is having a knock-on effect on
the availability of other HRT alterna-
tives. Even if they find a suitable substi-
tute, women report that their GP sur-
geries are not changing their prescrip-
tions quickly enough.
A black market
has emerged, with
reports of pre-
scription-only
medication
being sold on-
line for six
times its NHS
price.
Meta has re-
moved listings on
Facebook Market-
place in which several in-
dividuals in England and Wales
were attempting to sell bundles
of HRT products at up to £50.
The NHS prescription
charge in England is £9.35.
Experts have urged
women not to swap treat-
ments. However, some
remain defiant.
“I think women should
do whatever they bloody
need to do because no-
body else is doing it for us,”
Claire Johnson, 47, a
mother of four from Ketter-
ing, said.
She has suffered severe
menopausal symptoms
since having a hysterecto-
my at 41. “Along with all
the joint pain, the memory
loss, tinnitus and carpal
tunnel syndrome, I was suicidal.
At one point, I even moved out of
our family home and stayed in
my mum’s spare bedroom.”
HRT has, literally, been a
“lifesaver”, so when she ran out
of Estradot patches, she felt
her only option was to con-
tinue with an out-of-date
packet from to a friend.
“Of course, we’re not
supposed to take other
people’s medication,
but we’ve got to do
what we need to do to
survive.”
She is “proud” that
women are helping
each other. “But theseHRT is rationed to ease shortages
I
t’s time to banish once
and for all the idea that
HRT is some kind of
luxury for middle-aged
women. We are not
talking about a beauty
serum here. There’s a crass
image of the menopause of
a woman having hot flushes
or throwing a pan across
the kitchen. But for many of
us the symptoms are more
nuanced, but no less
debilitating, and they can be
dramatically improved by
HRT.
For me it was two years
ago, at the age of 47, that I
began feeling that I was just
simply not myself. I felt
fatigued, I was beginning to
forget things. There were
moments when I was on air
and I would see a player’s
face in my head but could
not recall his name. I would
be forced to say something
more generic. My words
were just not flowing in the
same way as they used to. I
got myself out of these
situations but began to
wonder: was I getting past
it? I was starting to not
enjoy my job as much as I
had because I felt I wasn’t
performing as well as I
could. There was a bit of me
thinking: maybe there is a
reason why you don’t see so
many older women
broadcasters on TV?
I’ve always wanted my two
teenage children (they’re
now 16) to see a positive
mum who is dynamic and
hardworking but I was
beginning to feel grouchy,
lacklustre, no longer brave
or willing to do something
out of my comfort zone. For
someone who has always
been a coper and a
multitasker, that was a
horrible, alien feeling. For
many women, menopausal
symptoms like this can
be hard to describe
because there isn’t an
obvious physical
manifestation. And I
feel enormous
gratitude for my life,my family, my work and I
didn’t want to complain.
I would have felt stupid
going to my doctor saying:
“I don’t want to waste your
time but I don’t feel like me
any more.” But equally Ithought that I didn’t want to
spend the next 30 years of
my life feeling like a
sub-standard version of
myself.
There are still so many
women out there, some withsymptoms so crippling that
they can’t get out of the
house, who aren’t getting
the help they need, either
because their GP doesn’t
know how to advise them,
because of the issue withshort supplies of HRT or
because they can’t afford it.
One of the events that
changed things for me was
interviewing Mariella
Frostrup for my podcast The
Mid Point. She talked to me
about the huge relief she
got from HRT and I began
to wonder if it would help
me too. When I began using
it I felt a dramatic change,
within a few weeks. My
sleep quality improved, as
did my mood and also my
libido. It wasn’t as if one day
you think, “Oh my libido
has dropped off a cliff ”. It’s
more gradual than that.
When you do something
about it you realise it didn’t
have to be that way.
The good thing is that the
conversation has changed.
There’s a new generation of
women willing to demand
action. We must champion
the MP Carolyn Harris, who
has campaigned for a fixed
annual payment for HRT
prescriptions so everyone
can afford it. There is now a
petition, backed by the
Menopause Mandate,
founded by a group of
fantastic campaigners, to
get that speeded up.
We must also demand
that the menopause is
taught properly in medical
schools so doctors can give
better advice. And we need
HRT’s proven health
benefits to be promoted
over scaremongering about
its risks. We need better
education in schools too, for
both sexes, because men
should be in this
conversation, too. I was on
BBC Breakfast recently
talking about the
menopause and my husband
had gone to a rugby match.
He sat down with two older
men in their sixties who
said: “We heard your wife
on the BBC, do you believe
in all that?” It was as if to
them the menopause is still
some kind of mythical
creature. We have some way
to go to get over the image
of the menopause that it’s
about middle-aged women
making a bit of a fuss.
The Mid Point with Gabby
Logan is on Apple PodcastsGabby Logan
CommentPETER BYRNE/PAough. Gabby Logan said that she had not realised what a difference HRT could make to her symptoms
rket
th- on
rket-
veral in-
land and Wales
tunn
At o
our
myhorrible
many
symp
be
be
ob
m
fe
grClaire Hattrick, left,
had chronic joint pain.
Claire Johnson, above,
was forced to use her
friend’s medicationLucy Bannerman
Eleanor Hayward Health Correspondent