Luke Taylor

The hon. Member is absolutely right. Many of our modern medicine practices are designed around avoiding the build-up of antibiotic resistance. The intention is to allow high-dose, effective antibiotics to be available when required, yet so many sufferers tell us that when they go to the doctor because they require those antibiotics, they are denied them. If this is not a case where those effective antibiotics must be used, even though resistance must be avoided, there cannot be a better example of the mismatch between intention and practice. I will come on to that in more detail, but I thank the hon. Member for making that point. The misdiagnosis of chronic UTIs does not lead to effective treatment and compounds sufferers’ agonising pain with awful frustration. At their most vulnerable and weak, they are being forced to prove that what is happening to them is real. That is Kafkaesque, and it is totally wrong. The key problem appears to be that specific National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines do not exist for chronic UTIs in England, and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network guidelines do not exist for the condition in Scotland. NICE guidelines for acute and recurrent UTIs exist, but as I have outlined, they are not fit for purpose for this chronic condition. How can GPs and urologists provide and recommend proper care, as the first point of contact with the patient, when there are no clear clinical guidelines? Without guidelines, many medical professionals are practically blind to the condition. They cannot prescribe the right antibiotics to relive patients’ pain because chronic UTIs are not even on their radar. Chronic UTI specialists do exist, and they recognise the condition and can help treat symptoms, but without proper guidance GPs and urologists, unintentionally or not, block patients from reaching them and refuse their requests for referral. Many chronic UTI sufferers have post-traumatic stress disorder from their interactions with medical professionals, never mind the suffering from the condition itself. I have heard stories of patients being essentially gaslit by medical professionals, told that the concern is all in their heads, denied antibiotics and given antidepressants instead. It seems that some GPs and urologists have dismissed the illness as a women’s problem and have told patients just to deal with the pain. That is not medicine; it is misogyny. I urge the Minister to push for the creation by NICE and SIGN of guidelines on chronic UTIs that are distinct from those on recurrent UTIs. That is long overdue and will hopefully bring to an end those kinds of interactions between suffering patients and GPs, but that alone will not be enough. There have to be better treatment offers for chronic UTI patients further down the pipeline. Right now, there is just one NHS specialist clinic in the entire country: the lower urinary tract symptoms clinic at Whittington hospital in London—one clinic for a nationwide illness. It offers fantastic support for patients, but waiting times are too long. We all know that waiting lists are far too high across the NHS— I commend the Government for their approach to bringing waiting lists down generally—but for chronic UTI sufferers forced to compete for the time of a solitary clinic, the effect is even more pronounced. Sufferers wait months, even years, for help if they are lucky enough to secure a referral in the first place. Even once patients get to the clinic, relief is still not guaranteed. The LUTS clinic offers long-term, high-dose antibiotics that can treat the symptoms, but they bring only partial relief, leaving many dragging themselves through life exhausted, drowsy and still in pain. That is not really living; it is enduring. Worse, the antibiotics do not work for everyone: about 30% of patients cannot tolerate them at all. Imagine the despair of being in that 30%. The situation would be scandalous enough if it were simply the case that, in desperation, many chronic UTI patients turned to private healthcare, spending thousands of pounds that they do not have just to access the bare minimum of care, but it is more awful than that. Some are forced to go to even more extreme lengths and choose risky, experimental procedures just to lessen their suffering. They fly abroad and pay unlicensed doctors more than £30,000 to have their bladders surgically removed. Let me say that again: people are choosing to have their organs ripped out in foreign countries because mainstream healthcare in the UK offers them nothing. For some, those risky surgeries offer relief, but for many the infection is already in their kidneys, and they return from the operation bladderless and with multiple complications. Some suffers, with few options left, make a choice that should haunt us in this House. Rather than live another day like that, they take the most extreme choice of all: to take their own life. That is not how people should be living in modern Britian, and that is why we should spare no expense in researching better treatments and, of course—as so many dream—a cure. I argue that the Government have an obligation, no matter the prevailing economic circumstances, to expedite the day that that becomes a reality. Promising medical trials already under way in the UK show real potential to transform how we treat chronic UTIs. Those treatments are ready to progress to human trials; the only thing standing in the way is funding. I urge the Minister to look into the roadblocks to getting more funding to the trials, and to come forward at the earliest opportunity with a plan to put conditions that are under-diagnosed and under-prioritised, such as chronic UTIs, at the front of their research agenda for this country’s biomedical research industry. I would be happy to put the Minister in touch with some of those working at the cutting edge of treatment in this field. I have told the story of chronic UTI sufferers and their longing for relief—a relief the Government can help them seek if they back their cause—but I remind the House that the condition exists in a much wider context: health issues that mainly impact women are consistently neglected and routinely dismissed. We know that women wait longer in accident and emergency departments. We also know that just 5% of global health research goes towards conditions that exclusively or disproportionately affect women. Even though 15% to 20% consult doctors for chronic pain, it was only this year that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists introduced an optional training module on chronic pain for trainee doctors. Inquiries such as Paterson and Cumberlege laid bare the systemic failures in how women’s health is treated in this country, but implementation and cultural change have lagged far behind the words. I have wondered many things since I first heard stories of chronic UTI sufferers, but nothing has unsettled me more than the lingering thought that if more men were affected by the disease, we would have had better treatments decades ago. That is an oft-used cliché but it comes up time and again. The Minister has heard today about the scale of unimaginable pain that those with chronic UTIs experience. She has heard about the broken diagnostic system that stops too many sufferers getting the help they need. She has heard about the roadblocks to developing better treatments that are standing in the way of relief. I simply reiterate my asks. Will she and her officials meet me and these brave sufferers to hear more about the specific actions that the Government need to take to clear the roadblocks? Will they commit to pushing for the NICE guidelines to be brought up to date to reflect the latest understanding of this disease? Will they outline what steps they are taking to combat the wider problem of the neglect of women’s health issues? Chronic UTI sufferers deserve so much more.