Epileptic teenager launches legal challenge over block to GP prescribing of medical cannabis

Charlotte Caldwell and her son Billy filed a lawsuit against the NHS and the Department of Health of Northern Ireland to challenge the decision by the Department of Health and Human Services of Northern Ireland (HSCNI) to prohibit GPs from prescribing CBD based medicine.

Billy has a rare and particularly severe form of epilepsy that causes him to have hundreds of attacks per year. However, after a 13-year-old boy started using medicinal cannabis oil prescribed in the U.S., the number of seizures fell to one per month.

“We have exhausted all other options and we are ourselves exhausted,” Ms Caldwell wrote in a post on Facebook. “This is a road we did not want to take and tried every way we could to avoid it. Sadly for Billy he was left with no choice.

Following the scientific discovery of the beneficial effects of CBD in the treatment of Dravet’s syndrome and other rare epilepsy in children, changes were made in UK legislation to allow doctors to prescribe CBD-based medications for diseases such as epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.

However, despite the fact that the law came into force a few years ago, it is still very difficult to obtain a prescription and according to some estimates, fewer than a hundred people have been able to obtain prescriptions since then.

Urgent hearings in the Billy case are tentatively scheduled for the end of August.