Opiates
(asked on 27th October 2015) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many prescriptions for opioids were written in each of the last 15 years.
Information is not held centrally for numbers of prescription items written. The table provides both the numbers of prescription items dispensed for opioid medicines in England, as defined by the British National Formulary (BNF) Section 4.7.2 opioid analgesics, and an analysis of prescribing trends, for the last 15 calendar years, using England population figures.
Number of prescription items and prescription items per 1,000 of population in England, for opioids, as defined by BNF 4.7.2, based on prescriptions written in the United Kingdom and dispensed in the community, in England. | ||||
| Prescription items (thousands)1 | Items per 1,000 population 2 | % change in prescription items 2 | % change in items per 1,000 population 2 |
2000 | 6,818.9 | 138.5 | - | - |
2001 | 7,462.1 | 150.9 | 9.4 | 9.0 |
2002 | 8,077.4 | 162.6 | 8.2 | 7.7 |
2003 | 8,731.1 | 174.9 | 8.1 | 7.6 |
2004 | 9,498.3 | 189.2 | 8.8 | 8.2 |
2005 | 10,709.9 | 211.6 | 12.8 | 11.8 |
2006 | 11,960.2 | 234.7 | 11.7 | 10.9 |
2007 | 13,408.8 | 261.0 | 12.1 | 11.2 |
2008 | 14,843.0 | 286.5 | 10.7 | 9.8 |
2009 | 16,270.5 | 311.7 | 9.6 | 8.8 |
2010 | 17,689.0 | 336.0 | 8.7 | 7.8 |
2011 | 19,124.4 | 360.1 | 8.1 | 7.2 |
2012 | 20,552.3 | 384.2 | 7.5 | 6.7 |
2013 | 21,710.3 | 403.0 | 5.6 | 4.9 |
2014 | 22,748.8 | 418.8 | 4.8 | 3.9 |
Source:
1 Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) system data provided by the Health and Social Care Information Centre
2 Analysis based on Office of National Statistics population statistics for England