Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many asthma inhalers have been issued in (a) Lewisham borough, (b) London and (c) England to (i) children and (ii) adults in each of the last 10 years.
The NHS Business Services Authority does not hold a complete data set for patient level data as age data is not held for all patients. As the medical condition is not available on or captured from the prescription form we are unable to identify the reason for why an inhaler is prescribed. Our organisational hierarchy does not include boroughs and so we cannot group data at this level.
A total figure for all medication used to treat respiratory conditions has been provided. The data does not distinguish between conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and also may contain non-inhaler medication. Regional data is only available from January 2014.
The following table shows the number of prescription items used to treat respiratory conditions by calendar year.
Calendar Year | England Items | London Area Items | Lewisham Clinical Commission Group Items |
2014 | 52,263,507 | 5,398,929 | 192,551 |
2015 | 53,111,230 | 5,409,083 | 192,893 |
2016 | 54,035,419 | 5,500,890 | 196,294 |
2017 | 53,991,507 | 5,478,939 | 196,831 |
2018 (not including December) | 49,029,913 | 4,912,130 | 176,739 |