Pharmageddon: the prescription pill epidemic

Pharmageddon: the prescription pill epidemic - Independent on Sunday

An interesting and timely article about the harm that doctors and their recklessly profligate prescribing habits are having on the health of individuals and on the finances of the NHS.

Extract:

"Britain is in the grip of a prescription drug-taking epidemic, with unprecedented numbers of medicines being handed out by GPs, costing billions of pounds and stretching already tight NHS resources to breaking point.

Prescription drug use has increased by 27 per cent in the past the five years and the NHS drug bill topped £10bn in 2006. GPs prescribed 918 million medicines last year compared with 721 million five years ago, according to figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday.

Health experts put rocketing prescription numbers down to medical advances, but also point to poor prescribing by GPs, growing public demand for a "pill for every ill" and aggressive marketing tactics by the pharmaceutical industry, which prompted one MP to warn that the UK is heading towards what he called "pharmageddon".

Paul Flynn, the Labour MP, warned that a failure to change attitudes would be disastrous. He said: "We are heading towards pharmageddon. The medicalising of society is convincing people they need a pill for everything. Drug companies recruit patients, particularly good-looking and articulate ones, to help promote new drugs in the media. Life and death decisions should not be taken by tabloids."

Doctors now write an average of 81 prescriptions a day compared with 64 five years ago. More than 730,000 prescriptions for antidepressants are being handed out each week, to the point where they almost match those for antibiotics at 870,000 a week.

More than £1bn has been wasted in the past five years on buying and disposing of drugs that were never used by patients, according to new research by the Conservative Party. GPs prescribe thousands of drugs patients don't want or take, according to this survey."


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