Thousands of women in the UK who use hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to manage menopause symptoms may have trouble accessing these products due to supply shortages. Oestrogel, in particular, is facing the biggest supply shortages as a result of a spike in demand. Many women worry how they will access treatments – and what impact this could have on their lives if they aren’t able to get prescriptions filled. Health Secretary Sajid Javid has been holding crisis talks with manufacturers and pharmacists to come up with a way to boost supply.
Pharmacy staff were already reporting shortages of 30 brands of HRT medicines back in May 2020 – though problems accessing these products have existed since 2018. The reasons for shortages at this time were an unexpected increase in demand and issues related to product manufacturing, particularly the patch adhesives used to apply some HRT products. Prescriptions for HRT have more than doubled in England since 2017 – with nearly 538,000 prescriptions for HRT in 2021 compared with 238,000 in January 2017. Changes in company ownership also caused production delays for some products.
