CAMPAIGNERS have urged City of York Council to support their bid to regain free back painkilling injections.

Members of York and District Pain Management Support Group made their plea to the council's Health and Adult Social Care Policy and Scrutiny Committee.

Group chairman Gordon Hart said health bosses had stopped funding injections for chronic back pain in 2009 and that members had been battling to get it restored ever since.

Mr Hart said: "These injections were stopped without any consultation with the patients. There was no question of going to the patients, some of whom have been benefitting for many many years."

The allocation of funding locally is controlled by the Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

Mr Hart said other CCGs were still paying for the treatment.

He said: "If we lived in Stamford Bridge on the right side of the road we would still be getting these injections."

The group has campaigned repeatedly for their cause in local media, with NHS bosses and lobbying MPs.

But Mr Hart told the committee: "We are up against a brick wall unless you can help us."

He added: "Chronic pain means that people are not able to take part in most domestic and social activities.

"Standing for a long time is not possible or very painful. Sitting for a long time is also very uncomfortable.

"They should restore funding to all those patients affected by the axe coming down in 2009."

Committee chairman Cllr Paul Doughty said: "I'm not entirely sure how we will be able to help."

But members agreed to write to the Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group to see whether funding could be restored.

Dr Jenny Jessop, a retired consultant in pain management, said: "When these injections were stopped in 2009, they were a very standard treatment in pain killing throughout the country.

"I have great issue with taking a group of about 125 people and stopping their injections abruptly without providing any alternative."

She described the decision as "dubious ethics" and said health bosses had not considered the full data available.

Dr Jessop said: "There is good evidence that these patients were getting benefits.

"It can't be beyond them to make some provision for these people."

Mr Hart added that the group only asking for the injections to be provided when no other therapy worked.

He said: "We are asking for a precise and ethically considered group to be given advantage of this."