UK pharmacists say epilepsy medication shortages have reached ‘crisis point’

A national shortage of some epilepsy medications in the UK is putting patients' safety at risk.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:14 You don't know how many epilepsy fits or attacks a person can have or how severe their epilepsy is

00:19 because obviously they've been taking it every single day for so many years

00:22 and if it just stops one day or even if they miss a dose, it's a big deal.

00:27 It might be that we need a strategic reserve storage of drugs.

00:33 We might have to bring drugs over from other parts of the world as an emergency to avoid this.

00:41 [Music]

00:45 If I'm being truthfully honest, I'm scared to know that,

00:50 okay, I might not get no medication for a few weeks or a couple of months.

00:56 I don't know, there's times when I've had to call five, six different pharmacies

01:02 and the more you're calling a different pharmacy and you're not hearing what you need to hear,

01:08 you're getting more and more frustrated.

01:10 So if I don't have my medication, I could have multiple seizures

01:16 and that could lead to hospitalisation and at worst case, death.

01:21 [Music]