REVEALED: NHS uses millions of YOUR money to prescribe painkillers, vitamins and VASELINE

THE CASH-STRAPPED NHS is blowing millions of pounds a year on over the counter medicines including painkillers, vitamin supplements and vaseline, it emerged tonight.

A pot of vaselineGETTY

The NHS is spending millions on prescriptions for basic medicines

Doctors are prescribing patients with basic medications that can be picked up at a supermarket including hay fever tablets, moisturising cream and even shampoos. 

Amongst the products being dished out to patients for free are Piriton anti-allergen tablets, Vicks Vaporub cold treatment and even the Berocca all-vitamin supplement. 

The revelations will raise serious questions over NHS spending at a time when the health service is struggling to maintain vital services. 

They will also enrage millions of ordinary Britons who pay for such basic treatments out of their own pockets. 

Hayfever tabletsGETTY

Basic treatments including hayfever tablets are being doled out

Figures released tonight show that officials doled out an astonishing 276,444 prescriptions for Piriton and Piriteze treatments last year at a staggering cost of £503,586 to the taxpayer. 

The NHS also blew £156,486 on over the counter Infacol colic and £122,079 on sleep aid tablets Nytol, which are available at UK supermarkets. 

But perhaps the most astonishing cost was the £1 million spend health bosses approved for prescriptions of anti-dandruff Neutrogena T/Gel shampoo, which is easily available from leading pharmacies including Boots. 

Some of the smaller spends were equally bizarre, with £17,816 being spend on Vaseline and £68,589 on Neutrogena moisturising cream. 

A woman compares shampoosGETTY

A million pounds is being spent on shampoo

Lord OwenEPA

Lord Owen has warned that the EU is destroying the NHS

Cold sore treatments including Blistex accounted for more than £23,000, inhalation preparations Olbas Oil and Vicks Vaporub cost £14,987 and teething gels for babies accounted for more than £38,000. 

Elsewhere 2,758 prescriptions for Kalms, including herbal sleeping pills, set taxpayers back a whopping £6,461 and the public purse was billed for bottles of Berocca costing £4,100.

Even people who went to the doctor with a headache appear to have been given free medication on the NHS, with NHS bosses authorising 445 prescriptions for 4Head headache relief sticks at a cost of £2,534.

When Should you call NHS 111?

The revelations come amid a debate over the future of the NHS in the event of Britain leaving the EU later this year. 

Desperate pro-Brussels campaigners have claimed that a Brexit will cost the health service £10 billion, but Eurosceptics have warned that the EU's trans-Atlantic TTIP trade treaty will ultimately lead to it being privatised. 

Former Labour foreign secretary Lord Owen said last week that the "dysfunctional European Union" is killing our health service with excessive regulation and constant meddling. 

The once Europhile politician said: "The EU/Eurozone from 1992, in marked contrast to the old European Community of 1975, creeps into every nook and cranny of our life.

"It is now becoming entrenched in the NHS and this June we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get it out."

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