It’s scandalous that heavy drugs are patients’ only option

Patients in desperate pain are being driven to opioid addiction and accidental overdoses through lack of other treatments.

Heavy drugs are all many are left with and that is an outrageous situation.

It’s unfair to blame GPS, they can only renew prescriptions for more drugs. For years, the government has ignored pleas to help specialist NHS pain clinics, which coped with some 60,000 patients a year before lockdown.

Clinics offer numerous treatments as well as assessing medication. Patients have begged the government to aid clinics, without response.

Specialist treatments most sought by patients – approved by expert clinicians – are lidocaine infusions and pain relief injections.

It’s significant that Fife, the area studied, is the only part of Scotland which offers neither treatment.

All other areas treat with either infusions or injections, a few boards offer both. The Scottish Government is promoting “self-management” for chronic pain, cheaper but unsuitable on its own for many serious cases.

Pain clinics were closed for seven months or more during lockdown, leading to outrageous levels of suffering. Re-openings involved infusions. But thousands in Scotland still cannot get their injections renewed. Due every six months, government officials failed to inform patients they could get injections from last year. Some are still left in extreme agony after 15 long, harrowing months.