Viagra is to be sold without a doctor’s prescription in a move to make the antiimpotence pill more widely available.

Men aged between 30 and 65 who visit one of three branches of Boots in Manchester on or after February 14 will be able to buy four tablets for £50, if they can satisfy the pharmacist that their medical history, blood pressure and cholesterol and glucose levels are satisfactory.

Boots believes that the plan will attract men too bashful to visit their GP for a prescription, even though the normal price for four 50mg tablets is £19.34.

The scheme has been made possible by the Patient Group Directions, a relatively little-used provision in prescribing regulations. They are designed to allow health professionals other than doctors to prescribe medicines for a defined group of people under waivers signed off by local health chiefs.

Emergency contraception is provided in this way. Other examples are diamorphine pain-killers for people who have had a heart attack, antidotes to biological weapons and antiviral drugs in a flu pandemic.

The directions were introduced in August 2000, and extended to pharmacists in 2004. The Viagra plan is based on similar programmes offered for weight loss, hair retention and chlamydia treatments.

The waiver will cover only the first four pills. After that the men will be sent to a private doctor for a further consultation costing £37.50. Subsequent packs of Viagra will cost £21.25.

The pilot scheme may be seen as guiding the way to removing Viagra from prescription altogether and making it a true “over-the-counter” drug. Pfizer, its manufacturer, would gain hugely if the drug could be marketed without prescription.

Alex Gourlay, Boots health-care director, said that the scheme was a real innovation. He said that it was estimated that only 10 per cent of the three million men who suffered erectile dysfunction were being treated.

“We believe that offering this programme will improve access to treatment and give wider choice to patients,” he said.

Graham Marshall, the group’s medical director, said that erectile dysfunction could often be a marker for a more serious underlying medical condition. “This programme will also act as a men’s health screen, so we can refer patients back to their GP for further investigation if appropriate.”

The scheme has been welcomed by Ian Banks, the president of the Men’s Health Forum. He said that Viagra was a lot safer than many medicines that were currently available without a prescription.

The only problems could arise, he said, when men were also taking nitrate tablets for chest pain.

Popular pill

- The first mention of Viagra in The Times was on February 3, 1998. Since then it has appeared in more than 1,100 articles

- Within two weeks of it going on sale in the US in 1998, doctors were writing 40,000 prescriptions a day

- It has been prescribed to more than 23 million men since its introduction

- 17 per cent of men between 40 and 70 have minimal impotency

Source: Times database

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