A shortage of prescription drugs has been witnessed by patients at the NHS. However, it has been recently revealed that the patients’ health is being jeopardized as the medication is being sold abroad rather than making them available for the patients.

The financial crisis has no doubt put many countries in a tight position. But it doesn’t mean that the government can play with the lives of the public by selling off life saving drugs to other countries at higher revenue.

It has come to light that making the drugs available for sale in the UK market abroad has caused an extreme shortage of drugs in the UK. A survey has highlighted that about half of the patients suffer because of the lack of the availability of drugs.

The survey was conducted by Chemist and Druggist magazine. For the survey, as many as 322 pharmacists were questioned. Out of them about 85% said that the health of the patients is being out at the risk by the practice of selling the drugs abroad.

There have been numerous incidences when patients had been made to wait to get medications. Half of the patients have either have faced severe illness or have succumbed to death. Not only the manufacturers are selling drugs abroad, the NHS has also been accused of following the footsteps.

While commenting upon the shortage of medicines in the market, a teaching and education consultant said, “It puts a huge amount of stress on you …I don't want to get a recurrence of my cancer - but if you miss out on your drugs, that leaves an opening for it to come back”.

The Department of Health has clearly stated that it can’t do anything to stop the trade. Therefore, the government should step in stooping the sales of drugs on the cost of patient’s health.