‘You shouldn’t have to fight this hard’: How the HRT shortage is causing suffering among women

Menopause is often treated as simply a ‘women’s issue’ as if feeling well was a luxury, not a necessity. Now there is a shortage of hormone replacement therapy and hundreds of thousands are struggling, reports Hannah Fearn

The HRT shortage is devastating many women’s lives (Getty)

Diane Danzebrink snorts when she is informed the health secretary, Sajid Javid, is to appoint an “HRT tsar” to sort out the hormone supply crisis that is devastating many women’s lives and leaving some suicidal. But the recent and sudden escalation of the problem hasn’t taken the government by surprise; quite the opposite.

“I was talking publicly on TV in 2019 about HRT shortages, so it’s not new,” says Danzebrink, the founder of Menopause Support. “It’s been a real eye of the storm in the last six months, but menopause and HRT should have been prioritised by the Department of Health back in 2019 when we had shortages then. The only reason a tsar has been appointed is that organisations like mine have encouraged women to write to the department and tell them exactly how these shortages are affecting them.”

The response those women received? “It has been insulting.”