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Test strips - lobby your MP

viviennem

Well-Known Member
Messages
3,140
Location
Wensleydale, North Yorkshire
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Other
Dislikes
Football. Bad manners.
Please find below the text of an email I have just sent to Paul Burstow (LibDem), the Minister for Health with responsibility for diabetes:


You can find an email contact for every UK Member of Parliament at the website parliament.uk.

I've also sent this to You & Yours, Woman's Hour and Today (all BBC), and I wrote to Diabetes UK yesterday asking for their help. No reply from them so far!

Any other ideas for people to lobby?

Viv 8)
 
Very good letter.

If people are willing to be interviewed then they could try their local radio stations in the affected areas. And of course the local papers. It could well be something that local journalists could get behind, and then you ask the local MPs (and GPs) to come and answer questions on air. It would need the local members of this forum to be confident in doing that, but if they were happy to, that could be very effective.
 
Instead of lobbying your MP what might be far better will be to launch a petition aimed at all the companies responsible for the manufacture of bg test strips. They are the real culprits with all this. My partner is an engineer (toolmaker) and he took some test strips apart to see how they were made and couldn't believe what he saw. They are just pieces of plastic strip with a tiny circuit through them. Once the tooling and the moulds are made, they cost just pennies to make. The NHS is being made to pay approx £15 for a box of 50 strips. My partner estimates that they cost only £1.50 for 50 to manufacture. There's one huge amount of profit being made that needs to be questioned and challenged.
 
I agree they are too pricey but the price has been made high usually to recover R&D costs to begin with but as its been many many years they should of been brought down in price. Great letter hopefully gets someone's attention
 

a very very good point and if anyone more organised than me wants to start this off, I for one will sign it!
 
In reply to my original email to the Minister, please find below the official reply to that email:


I've reproduced it here in full, as I did with my original email at the top of the thread. As far as I'm concerned anyone who would like to may use both in your struggle for prescribed strips. The DoH email doesn't say "Confidential" anywhere! :lol:

I think it's helpful, particularly paragraph 3; after all, if the reason you are not getting test strips is because you're not getting an "overall package of support for self-care" - well, the question to your GP/PCT, is "why I am not getting the support I need for my self-care?"

Good luck all!

Viv 8)
 
Hi all,
Ive had an answer from my local mp today here are copies of two letters that she has sent off for me
Sue



 
Those are brilliant letters by your MP, Sue02.

If we could get more MPs raising this problem all over the country, we might get somewhere!

I've had a reply from Diabetes UK, too -


The breakdown on this seems to be, that GPs can prescribe test strips if they want to, regardless of what the PCT says. And IF (if!) we're being provided with the education and support we are entitled to, then we should have our strips.

I hope this is of some use.

Viv 8)
 
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