The mother of a boy with severe epilepsy has urged medical cannabis manufacturers to ease the financial burden on hard-pressed families. Charlotte Caldwell said scores of families who contend with severe epilepsy are having to pay privately to get a prescription at a time when the cost of living is soaring.
Ms Caldwell and her son Billy, who are from from Castlederg, Co Tyrone, played a leading role in a campaign to secure a change in the law in 2018 allowing certain patients to access treatment through the NHS. However she told the PA news agency that despite that breakthrough, it has been a difficult road for families like hers.
She was speaking on the fourth anniversary of the confiscation of her son’s medical cannabis at Heathrow Airport after returning from medical treatment in Canada. They had travelled there after their GP was unable to continue prescribing the medicine. It was later returned to him after he became ill and was being cared for at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where his NHS doctor notified the Home Office that Billy’s condition had become life-threatening.
