By the way - heard a great podcast today (apols if it's been posted before!) from 8th September
https://play.acast.com/s/standardissuespodcast/66f9ef23-344c-463f-a424-eb1d0f42668b?autoplay"
SIM Ep 274 Chops 120: The HRT crisis
With women all over the country struggling to get their HRT prescriptions filled, are we in a women's health crisis? As part of our special series about the menopause, Hannah chats to Dr Anne Henderson about what is causing the HRT shortage, what women can do if they are affected and what the rest of us can do to help. They also chat about the paper recently printed in the Lancet linking HRT to breast cancer, and Hannah learned something about how few doctors receive training in the menopause at all. "
Consultant gynaecologist Dr Anne Henderson was interviewed and her view of the shortages was illuminating to say the least.
Again apols if this has all been said already.
The main points were:
1 Current HRT shortages are nothing to do with Brexit despite reports in the media. She says many of the products now out of stock or in short supply are not manufactured in the EU but eg China and US so should be unaffected by (no-deal/trade agreement Brexit). By contrasts, Besins which manufactures our HRT in Belgium - ie in EU has plentiful supplies of its products. She says the issue is EU wide and once stock in other EU countries has been exhausted then it will affect these countries too until supply is increased.
2 She laid the blame for UK shortages at the feet of Govt and the major pharmaceutical companies who have "dropped the ball"- but sounds like the Dept of Health. She says that specific government departments at the DoH closely monitor prescribing trends in all drugs - for obvious reasons - and pass the info to the pharmas who can then anticipate trends towards increased use and consequently increase production. Menopause specialists have known for 18-24 months that there has been an increase in women seeking advice on menopause and being prescribed HRT (
my comment - maybe as a result of NICE Guidelines?) and this has not been picked up by Government and the main pharma companies who produce most of the market share - notably Janssen and Mylan. Janssen has something 40 % of the market share for patches. The minor problem re Femseven wasn't mentioned so may well be insignificant compared with these big companies in terms of the current shortages. She said that the big companies' were not producing niche products (as they had a large market share) so when their supply is drying up then it has had a very quick domino effect on other products ( aside from Femseven - a different issue - but hasn't helped at this time!).
Anyway she said a lot more but these were the main points about the role of the DoH - she basically said that someone somewhere hasn't been doing their job because the infrastructure and system is there to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen.
Hope I have captured her main points accurately! Do listen for yourself if you have time. The Lancet paper was mentioned briefly too.
Food for thought?
Hurdity x
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Topic: HRT supply issues update on all Products see link (Read 112675 times)