By Phil Day

This winter is proving to be one of the toughest in years for pharmacies and primary care across the UK.

A severe flu season has seen flu cases in NHS hospitals jump 55 per cent in a week.

Combined with soaring seasonal illnesses, staff sickness, and impending bank holidays, our pharmacies, GPs, and NHS are all under immense pressure.

But there’s another symptom of the season that’s become a growing challenge in recent years and could be largely avoided if people were awake to it.

Urgent repeat prescription requests are enquiries made to NHS 111 when a patient has struggled to get their medication in time, usually because they’ve been unable to get a GP appointment or simply forgotten to order it in time.

This year, the NHS received an average of 135,000 requests a month, accounting for around one in five of the enquiries made to the NHS 111 online service.

Its popularity has grown in........

© LBC