A woman who has endured the pain of urinary tract infections (UTIs) all her adult life has welcomed the news that 99% of pharmacies in Wales will now able to treat the condition without a visit to the GP.<\/p>\n
Sian Jones, 72, has suffered from recurrent \u00ab\u00a0debilitating\u00a0\u00bb urinary tract infections for more than 50 years, and has lost two premature babies as a result.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Imagine, on a Friday afternoon, having a urine infection, and you’ve got to wait till Monday to see a GP – if you’re lucky – to have an appointment,\u00a0\u00bb she said. \u00ab\u00a0I think this will be an excellent way forward.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
The new pharmacy service only applies to women aged between 16-64, due to the complexity of treating chronic UTIs in old age.<\/p>\n
Ms Jones, from the Vale of Glamorgan, says she was born \u00ab\u00a0with a defect in my kidneys\u00a0\u00bb and has suffered with UTIs every other month since she was 18 years old.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0I had problems in pregnancy; I had two premature babies because of the way my kidneys were and my UTIs. It’s just something I’ve had to endure all my life.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
She said the new measures, which allow pharmacies to issue medication independently, \u00ab\u00a0wouldn’t help me\u00a0\u00bb – because she is over 70 – \u00ab\u00a0but if it helps anybody after the age of 16 to 64, I think it’d be welcomed.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0When I have a UTI, I know I’m hopeless – I can’t do anything,\u00a0\u00bb Ms Jones previously told the BBC.<\/p>\n
She said she tries to keep healthy, and self-medicate with cranberry juice and vitamins, but often needs medication to get better.<\/p>\n
Speaking to BBC Radio Wales Breakfast on Thursday, she said: \u00ab\u00a0After three days [trying to manage the pain], you get the bearing-down feeling and the pain in your back, and you know that it’s a full-on UTI, and you have to access your GP\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
She said she has learned to live with it \u00ab\u00a0over and over again\u00a0\u00bb, but describes it as \u00ab\u00a0so debilitating\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0It’s one of those things, unfortunately, as women that we have to endure.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Lowri Puw, a 31-year-old pharmacist in Caernarfon – and a member of Welsh Pharmacy Board – said giving more responsibility to pharmacists was \u00ab\u00a0fantastic news\u00a0\u00bb, allowing more patients to access UTI medication in a \u00ab\u00a0timely manner, so the infection doesn’t get worse\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
She recommends calling ahead to make an appointment, to avoid unnecessary trips to the pharmacy.<\/p>\n
She said the service was for women only, as UTIs in men are rare – and \u00ab\u00a0if a man does get a bacterial infection, a GP would need to do blood tests to make sure there is no risk of prostate cancer\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
And she said it was important to exercise caution around UTI prescriptions for older women.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0As women get older – and if they have more chronic recurrent urinary infections – the infection is more likely to become resistant to the antibiotics that we would normally prescribe.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0So in those cases, the sample would need to be sent off to the microbiology lab before treatment is started – just to make sure that we’re treating the right bugs.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0The last thing you’d want is for you to be getting the incorrect treatment, and it gets worse as opposed to being getting better.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
However, while welcoming the move to pharmacy care, Ms Puw warned it was essential to \u00ab\u00a0make sure there is funding in place to upskill\u00a0\u00bb staff, adding community pharmacy teams were already \u00ab\u00a0overstretched\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Community Pharmacy Wales is understood to be in \u00ab\u00a0talks with the Welsh government on that front\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
According to the NHS, signs of a UTI may include:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A woman who has endured the pain of urinary tract infections (UTIs) all her adult life has welcomed the news that 99% of pharmacies in Wales will now able to treat the condition without a visit to the GP. Sian Jones, 72, has suffered from recurrent \u00ab\u00a0debilitating\u00a0\u00bb urinary tract infections for more than 50 years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}