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The number of prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy is rising, data shows, but medical specialists warn that supply is still failing to meet demand with women left at the mercy of a “postcode lottery” in treatment.
HRT prescriptions rose faster in London than in any other region in the year to January 2025, according to a Financial Times analysis of official data for England.
In London, the number of items of the medication, which is prescribed for menopausal symptoms, increased 11.4 per cent — 61 per cent faster than in the South West, the region with the slowest growth.
Health campaigners said a growing awareness of the significant benefits of HRT, after TV presenter Davina McCall and other celebrities highlighted the issue, has encouraged more women to seek treatment.
But they added that despite the uptick, too many women were being left to struggle with symptoms and in some cases being forced to leave the workplace altogether.
“We have raised awareness and more women are asking for it [so] we are of course seeing a rise in prescriptions, which is a good thing,” said Carolyn Harris, a Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on menopause.
“But the issue is that the system hasn’t yet caught up and prescriptions rates are still significantly lower than they should be. Women are walking away from work, or reducing their hours because they are not getting the diagnosis, let alone the treatment,” she said.
According to a government report published last year, the UK loses 14mn working days every year from menopause-related absence and about one in 10 working women aged 40 to 55 leave their jobs because of the symptoms.
Harris added that “more professional women are being educated about this issue” through the media or friends and were more able to pay for private treatments they could not get on the NHS.
A record 1.3mn items of HRT were prescribed in January 2025, according to data published by the NHS Business Services Authority on Wednesday — five times as many as at the start of 2014, when the data was first collected.
But Dr Geeta Kumar, vice-president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said there was a “postcode lottery” for women’s health services and that treatment had been affected by long gynaecology waiting lists, which had more than doubled over the past five years.
Data published by NHSBSA last year showed that the number of HRT items prescribed to the least deprived 20 per cent of women rose more than six-fold over the past decade, almost twice the rate of growth for the most deprived fifth.
HRT is prescribed to treat common menopause and perimenopause symptoms such as hot flushes and brain fog, but doctors say it also reduces the risk of conditions such as osteoporosis, heart disease and dementia.
Louise Newson, a doctor and menopause specialist, said HRT was still heavily under-prescribed because doctors are not educated properly on the benefits.
“We’ve got a really cheap, cost effective and clinically effective treatment to replace missing hormones yet there’s this massive reluctance to treat it,” she said.
“There’s a lot of savings. Women who are treated don’t go back and forth to their GP, a lot come off their antidepressants, they are less likely to have hip replacements,” she added.
Barriers to treatment have been exacerbated by supply issues over the past few years, with 26 serious shortage notices for HRT products issued by the government since 2022.
While most shortages have been resolved, three HRT products sold under the brand Estradot are currently affected, according to NHSBSA.
Sandoz, the manufacturer of Estradot, said it had increased its supply but could not move fast enough to keep up with demand because the medicine is made by a third-party supplier.
It expects to have “very limited supply in the UK” for most of the year, but said it is working closely with the government to manage the disruption.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it would address “unacceptable” disparities in women’s health through the 10-year plan.
“Under the broken NHS we inherited, women’s healthcare has been neglected. We are fixing this, using the independent sector to cut gynaecological waiting lists,” it added.
NHS England said it introduced a HRT pre-payment certificate in 2023 to reduce the cost of prescriptions and was working to improve menopause care by developing a range of tools to upskill GPs.
“We will continue to support local areas to roll out more convenient services that meet the needs of women in their communities,” it added.
