Peterborough college student who cannot afford asthma inhalers calls on government to make them free

Kira Gibson said when she turned 19 this year she had to start paying for inhalers but could not afford repeat prescriptions.

She has now set up an online petition calling on the Government to ‘Make Asthma Inhalers Free’ which has so far been signed by 1,800 people.

Kira said: “When I was a baby I was in and out of hospital for asthma attacks and ended up having several hospital visits throughout my childhood for my asthma.

“As I got older these visits died off and my asthma started to regulate under asthma inhalers and pills. When I got to secondary school I had started to get more asthma attacks and it made my school work very difficult.

“When I got to year 10 and 11 I had more asthma attacks and my inhalers didn’t work properly and again, my school work was impacted upon even more than before since I was working on my GCSEs.

“Last October, I had another attack but luckily it was only a mild attack.

When I turned 19 this year I had to start paying for my inhalers and a lot of the time ended up skipping out on getting my repeat prescriptions because I cannot afford it.

“I cannot afford a pre-payment certificate and therefore end up going through the blue inhalers a fair few times a day because I cannot afford my preventer inhaler.

“I know other people have the same difficulty as me and I want to be able to get the cost of asthma inhalers cut because just from my own experience, the simple fact is, I cannot breathe. I cannot afford the prescription to be able to breathe and you have to pay to stay alive which I find, quite frankly, absurd.

“I want others like me to be able to get their prescriptions and to be able to breathe well, and it also covers things like bronchitis and other lung issues like pneumonia and pleurisy that cause people to need inhalers to be able to breathe.

“My aim is to try and get all inhalers to be free, much like contraceptions are and other medications for certain illnesses.

“And most of all, I don’t want to be relying on the blue inhaler to keep me out of hospital anymore.”

The petition can be signed here.