500 signatures reached
To: Jeremy Hunt
Free prescriptions for transplant patients
I want the Government to review the medical exemption list and include all transplant patients on the list so they no longer have to pay for life saving medication.
Why is this important?
Right now, thanks to the selfless sacrifice of others, people all over the world every day at this very second are undergoing an organ transplant to save their lives but this is only part of a life long battle to stay alive. If you are one of those lucky enough to survive the transplant and the recovery period (which includes avoiding a number of complications, battling to prevent rejection, and in some cases hoping the disease doesn't take hold). In order to survive transplant patients have to take a variety of anti-rejection drugs every single day, drugs that they will take until the day they die. Transplant patients have no choice but to take the medication, without it they die.
I know this because I am one of those transplant patients. After fighting through a period of ill health I recently felt well enough to get on with my life and I started work. The excitement of a new job was short lived when I found I had to start paying high prescription charges for the very medication I need to prevent my body from rejecting my transplant organ. I do not have a choice over taking this medication, it is literally life or death.
I contacted my local MP and sent a letter to the Department for Health. The reply I received was simple: The medical exemption list was put together in 1968 and there are no plans to review this list. To me this is wrong. In 1968 there was no where near the amount of transplants as there are today and by not reviewing the list the Government are saying they do not care that people are forced to pay for life dependent medication.
This is not good enough. In 2008 the Government promised to make prescriptions free for all those with long-term conditions in the coming years, however this has been scrapped by the current Government. However with enough signatures we can get the issue back on the agenda and make politicians answer to why they think it fair that transplant patients (who did not ask to be ill) pay prescription charges for life in order to survive.
