£7m Shropshire bill for diabetes medicines

Health bosses in Shropshire and Telford are now spending more than £7 million a year on medicines for diabetes, new figures reveal suggesting the problem is on the increase.

Nationally, there were 40 million prescriptions for diabetes medicine last year – twice the number issued just six years ago. Campaigners are warning that the blood condition could bankrupt the NHS by 2025.

Diabetes, caused by the body being unable to regulate the amount of sugar in the blood, can lead to a number of health problems.

There are 2.9 million people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK and it is estimated that 850,000 people have the condition but don’t know it.

Between April 2011 and March this year, the Shropshire Primary Care Trust issued 208,111 prescriptions for diabetic medicine at a cost of of £4.3 million – a rise of 7.9 per cent on the previous year.

In Telford, more than 208,000 prescriptions were issued at a cost of £2.7m – a rise of 7.5 per cent.

County health bosses were unavailable to comment today.

But Barbara Young, chief executive of Diabetes UK, said: “The number of people with diabetes is expected to reach 4.2 million in England by 2025.

“We face the real possibility of diabetes bankrupting the NHS within a generation.”

Les Walton, of Shrewsbury, said he had been living with the condition for 28 years and it did not affect his daily life.

“I was getting very thirsty and I noticed I was tired a lot of the time,” said Mr Walton, of Castlefields.

Mr Walton went to his doctor who diagnosed Type 2 diabetes – the most common form of the condition – which requires regular injections of insulin.