Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that patients prescribed Letrozole are able to access a brand they can tolerate.

Where a prescriber specifies a specific brand or manufacturer on the prescription, the pharmacy should provide that specific product to the patient. However, obtaining a product from a particular supplier may take the pharmacy longer to source.

Pharmacies are largely private businesses, which provide National Health Services and have their own buying arrangements. Not all manufacturers supply to all wholesalers and not all pharmacies use the same wholesalers. This can mean there may be some specific manufacturer’s products that a pharmacy may not easily be able to source.

Where a pharmacy is unable to supply a particular medicine promptly, their professional guidance states that they should talk to the patient to discuss the possible options available to them. This includes checking whether the medicine is available at another pharmacy or offering to contact the patient’s prescriber to jointly consider whether another suitable brand or medicine is available.