Yesterday we received the following email:
I am a coeliac, have been for 31 years. When I was diagnosed the bread was tinned and things have progressed a lot since then.
My friend recently became coeliac, and gets a prescription from the same doctors’ surgery as I do, but she is given Warburtons brown loaves. I have tried Warburtons brown bread and it is the nearest to what I remember as “normal” bread before being diagnosed.
I have asked to be given the Warburton’s bread on my prescription but have been told that they are not available. This does not seem fair, because I am sure that all gluten-free loaves are roughly the same price.
Are they allowed to do this? I would really appreciate your opinion on this as it seems so unfair that they should give this bread to one diagnosed coeliac on prescription and not to another.
Any comments welcome….
If the product has a PIP code then it is available on prescription and your doctor can prescribe it. PIP codes for Warburtons are:
400g Sliced White Loaf368 – 5260
400g Sliced Brown Loaf368 – 5278
3 Pack White Sub Rolls368 – 5286
3 Pack Brown Sub Rolls
This sounds very unfair. Yesterday I didn’t bake bread for our stall (over laid – no excuses I was tired) – having tried this product at the Free From Show, suggested customers try this product. I hate to say it, but it is brilliant and should be available to coeliac’s. I would happily eat it and I’m not coeliac. Not fair.
Thanks Annie – very helpful – I will pass the info on to our correspondent. Seems totally ludicrous situation and I can only assume (well, hope, anyway) that it was some mix-up at her surgery rather than a deliberate attempt to control what products coeliacs can have.
My surgery bizarrely doesn’t use PIP codes but product codes and I had a battle to get them to be able to “find” the bread on their system. I now have the product codes too, in case they help anyone:
400g White Loaf 50 10044 00508 9
400g Brown Loaf 50 10044 00509 6
3 pack White Rolls 50 10044 00510 2
3 pack Brown Rolls 50 10044 00511 9
So surgeries really have no excuse now!
Thanks Annie – we’ll know who to come to if anyone has any further problems!!
Some of us are more than coeliacs. Suggest you bake your own, Michelle has my recipe. I think we have to use our own iniiative and not look to the NHS to provide food for us. Yes, life it very unfair.