London - Viagra prescriptions should be rationed to two pills a month, GPs have been told - on the assumption that patients will have sex only once a fortnight.
Managers at several NHS trusts are encouraging doctors to limit the number of tablets handed out to cut costs.
Critics say that such rationing is treating sex “like an unnecessary luxury” and warn it will cause anguish among patients.
The £5 (about R60) pill is already heavily restricted and only men with serious illnesses that affect their sex drive are eligible to have the medication for free.
There are no national restrictions on how many should be given to each patient per month.
However, the Department of Health has previously issued guidance stating middle-aged men - those aged 40 to 60 - only need it once a week because that is their “frequency of intercourse”.
Now a panel of managers overseeing primary care trusts in Oxfordshire, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire have told GPs to halve this number.
The guidance issued by the South Central Priorities Committee, uncovered by Pulse Magazine, says doctors should only prescribe Viagra and two other drugs that have similar effects at “a maximum frequency of dosing of two times a month”.
The panel says it has come up with the guidance having looked at the “financial impact on the health economy”. Dr Paul Roblin, who represents a committee of GPs in the area said: “It is getting in the way of GPs having a sensible dialogue with patients about their requirements.
“Local priorities committees don’t understand the only restrictions on GP prescribing come from the national ‘Blacklist’ and ‘Greylist’.”
These lists denote drugs that cannot be prescribed on the NHS, or can be prescribed in a limited number of cases.
Mr Roblin said local priorities committees “sometimes portray recommendations as a rule that has to be obeyed, and that’s not true”.
Richard Hoey, editor of Pulse, said: “Ask most doctors and they will say that being able to live a satisfactory sex life is a key part of health and well-being.
“But the NHS has never recognised that in its policy on treatment for erectile dysfunction.
“Limiting patients to drugs such as Viagra just twice a month is to treat sex like an unnecessary luxury, and completely fails to recognise the degree of anguish it can cause some men with erectile dysfunction.”
A NHS Oxfordshire spokesman insisted GPs were not being ordered to ration the pills.
“Any decision made by the PCT cannot prohibit prescribing, but will form a recommendation to GPs,” he added.
The NHS spends around £58million a year handing out more than 17million repeat prescriptions for impotence drugs.
Currently only men with conditions such as prostate cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis or kidney failure that are known to reduce their sex drive are eligible to get them for free. - Daily Mail