Montelukast: Children
(asked on 20th May 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children aged one to five have been prescribed montelukast in each of the last five years.
The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) holds patient identifiable data relating to drugs prescribed in England and dispensed within a community setting, and which are submitted to the NHSBSA for processing.
The following table shows the total number of identified children in the requested age bands that were prescribed Montelukast for the financial years 2020/2021 to 2024/2025:
Financial year | Age band one to five years old | Age band five to 11 years old |
2020/2021 | 31,448 | 57,057 |
2021/2022 | 44,675 | 62,587 |
2022/2023 | 47,301 | 69,837 |
2023/2024 | 41,346 | 74,859 |
2024/2025 | 30,849 | 70,903 |
Data Source: NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.
It should be noted that the age ranges requested overlap for children aged five years old, so the given age bands should not be added or combined.
Care should be taken when interpreting the patient counts, as some patients could appear in the results for multiple time periods. For example, a single patient could appear in the results for multiple financial years. Therefore, the patient numbers should not be combined and reported at any other levels other than as provided in the dataset.