A woman from Harrogate who suffers up to 20 migraine days a month says she isn’t being prescribed a set of drugs that could help her.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) approved the anti-CGRP drugs for use in March 2020 yet Tiffany Snowden says the NHS in England still isn’t prescribing them.
Anti-CGRP drugs are the first medication created specifically for episodic or chronic migraines.
Ms Snowden says only other option being to buy the medicine herself at a cost of £350 per month.
Before discovering the anti-CGRP medication Mrs Snowden had been prescribed three different medications, but Mrs Snowden said they made her feel very ill.
Tiffany Snowden and her husband Matthew
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Having found out that the drugs have been available in England and Wales since March 2020, Ms Snowden filed a freedom of information request to Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust asking how many people had been prescribed them in the district.
The trust did not meet the deadline to return the information to Ms Snowden. A spokesperson told the Stray Ferret:
“A response to Tiffany’s Freedom of Information request will be with her shortly. We are working hard to respond to FOI requests but owing to operational pressures during the covid pandemic, replies may be delayed.
“While we are unable to comment on individual cases, anti-CGRP drugs, which currently include erenumab, galcanezumab and fremanezumab, are available as potential treatment for patients accessing services for episodic and chronic migraine. That is for those patients that fulfil the NICE criteria for their use.”
In response, Ms Snowden — who says she does fit the NICE criteria — said:
“That is great news that the hospital is able to prescribe those drugs under the NHS but it does not change the difficulty patients in our district are having in accessing them”.
The NHS North of England Commissioning Support Unit has said the drugs will be available from this month in England and Wales.