Former EastEnders star has had ’40 doctors appointments’ and spent ‘over five figures’ amid gruelling health condition

FORMER Lucy Beale actress Melissa Suffield has shared how she had around 40 GP appointments last year and feels she's a burden on the NHS.

Battling small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, Melissa Suffield, who turned 32 on Christmas Eve, is raising awareness for SIBO after she became ill in December 2023.

Fighting for a diagnosis after experiencing "horrible nausea", Melissa has felt nauseous "ever since" and has spent an eye-watering amount of money on prescriptions.

Melissa also believes that she's a bigger burden on the NHS now, after having lost weight due to her health condition, compared to when she was bigger before her SIBO diagnosis.

"I am now currently more of a burden on the NHS than I was when I was bigger last year. That is a fact. That is a pure fact," she told us in an exclusive interview,

"I've been bounced around from this department to this department.

"I've been requesting tests left, right, and centre. I'm almost at 40 GP visits just this year."

She then added how she has spent more than five figures and an "obscene amount of money on prescriptions" adding: "I am a bigger burden on the NHS in my smaller body, with my perfect BMI."

Elsewhere in her chat with us, Melissa spoke of how she has now proven that bigger people are not a burden on the NHS.

"What it [losing weight due to her SIBO diagnosis] has helped me do is prove the point that I've always, always made, which is that you cannot define how healthy someone is, by how much they weigh, or how fat you think they look or whatever it is that you think you know," the former Lucy Beale star told us.

"We say, 'oh, you know fat people, they're a burden. Blah! Blah!' It's not true. It's just not true," she urged.

The former soap star played Lucy Beale from 2004 until 2010.