Hundreds of thousands of women in the UK have been affected by the ongoing shortage of many HRT products. The products aren’t made in the UK but the shortage is very much a UK thing. Emma Hartley discovers why.

The short version: the UK government messed up.

The slightly longer version: supply problems have been massively magnified by a change to the way the UK prices HRT medication, changes which have also been affected by the Brexit-related fall in the value of the pound.

Hence a supposedly global problem having disproportionate effects on women in the UK.

At the heart of a problem so ferociously complex that many in the pharmaceutical industry even have trouble understanding it, could this be a simple case of incompetence?

It certainly seems to be.