The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7343 p391
2 April 2005

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· Anticoagulation services
· RFID tagging
· Repeat dispensing (2)
· Council election (5)
· PI insurance (2)
· Generics
· Prescription charges
· Medicines for children
· The Society
· CPD
· The register (2)
· The Journal (2)

Letters to the Editor

Prescription charges

A review of current arrangements is urgently overdue

From Mr D. P. Morgan, MRPharmS

All health professionals, and people with type 1 diabetes, can rejoice at the recent breakthrough in diabetes therapy heralded by the use of islet tissue injections leading to cessation of the need for regular insulin injections for one experimental patient.

However, since he will need anti-rejection therapy for life as well as regular monitoring of his condition, he will, probably, need to face the burden of NHS prescription tax until age 60, from which, as a treated diabetic patient, he was previously exempted.

Contrast this with the situation of the fibrocystic disease sufferer, having survived against the odds to adulthood, with a regular gamut of therapy to maintain life and normality, hoping against hope that the condition will so damage the islet tissue that substitution therapy with insulin will relieve them of the burden of prescription tax.

A review of the NHS prescription tax arrangements, with another increase coming, is urgently overdue.

David Morgan
Abingdon, Oxfordshire

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