People with eating disorders have been able to access weight management medicines from online pharmacies, according to a report from ITV News.
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has said it is ‘very concerned’ and promised to ‘look into these concerns and take any necessary action to protect patient safety’.
Earlier this year, the GPhC updated its guidance for distance selling pharmacies to make clear that when supplying weight loss medication, the prescriber is expected to independently check the information provided by the person, including their weight and height or body mass index (BMI).
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Chief pharmaceutical officer of the GPhC, Roz Gittings, said: ‘Through our inspections, we are seeing that the majority of pharmacies are working hard to follow our updated guidance and work in line with our standards.
‘When we find a pharmacy is not meeting our expectations, we take appropriate action, including putting in place improvement action plans or conditions on what they can do.’
According to the ITV News report, a large proportion of eating disorder clinics in the UK have treated anorexia and bulimia patients who have used weight-loss injections – some as young as 16 years old.
ITV News contacted the 24 major providers of eating disorder treatment in the UK and of the 14 that responded, 78% said their patients had reported using weight loss injections over the last year.
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Banbury Lodge in Oxford reported that 60% of the people they have treated recently were using weight loss injections.
One patient with anorexia – referred to as Florence in the ITV News report – was hospitalised multiple times while she was taking the injections that she obtained from a ‘well-known, respectable’ online pharmacy.
She said: ‘They’re so easily accessible. It can be so quick, it’s delivered to your house the next day, they don’t check any of your doctor’s details. I lost weight very rapidly.’
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CEO of the Orri eating disorder treatment clinic, Kerrie Jones, told ITV News that she wanted to test how accessible weight loss jabs were online, and she successfully managed to purchase several injection pens from online pharmacies after incorrectly recording her weight.
Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental health illness, and weight loss medicines could increase this risk according to Ms Jones.
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