Minister says 'no' to cancer drug plea

6:02am Saturday 10th March 2007

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HEALTH Secretary Patricia Hewitt has dashed the hopes of North-East kidney cancer patients desperate for a life-extending drug.

Speaking exclusively to The Northern Echo during a visit to the region, Mrs Hewitt made it clear she would not intervene in the growing row over access to new cancer medicines.

Three North-East patients - Kathleen Devonport, 63, from Chilton, and John Hodgson, 75, from Ferryhill, both County Durham, and Ken Potts, 53, from Blyth, Northumberland - have been told by their NHS consultants that a new drug called Sutent is the last option to extend their lives.

All have advanced kidney cancer and no other treatment is available to stop the disease spreading to other organs.

Despite an explicit recommendation from the UK's leading organisation of kidney cancer experts that Sutent - and a similar drug called Nexavar - should be "routinely available" to patients, Mrs Devonport and Mr Potts have been turned down after applying in writing to their local primary care trusts (PCTs).

Mr Hodgson is planning to write to County Durham PCT requesting Sutent next week.

All of the North-East patients have been told by their NHS doctors that they are unlikely to be prescribed the drug. The only option is to pay - at a cost of more than £30,000 a year.

Yesterday, Mrs Hewitt was handed a copy of a document drawn up by clinicians on the National Renal Cancer Institute's Clinical Studies Group calling for the drugs to be made available to UK patients.

Asked why North-East patients were being denied a licensed drug that is widely available in America and Europe, Mrs Hewitt said: "This is an immensely difficult situation for the patients concerned, and I can well understand their feelings about this.

"But decisions like this have to be made by clinicians, not by politicians.

"Now we have set up Nice (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) which is independent, clinically-led, and it is, I believe, the right body to make decisions on which treatments are both clinically and cost-effective and therefore should be available to all NHS patients."

While Sutent and Nexavar have still not been assessed by Nice, she said the decision whether to make the drug available was being made locally by the North-East Cancer Drugs Network.

Mrs Hewitt, who is understood to have come under considerable political pressure after allowing the new breast cancer drug, Herceptin, to be prescribed on the NHS, said it would be inappropriate to comment where appeals by patients to primary care trusts (PCTs) were pending.

Mrs Devonport met a kidney cancer specialist at a private Bupa hospital in Washington, Wearside, yesterday.

Turned down for Sutent by her PCT last week, Mrs Devonport and her husband, Ray, are now trying to find about £10,000 for the first three months of Sutent or Nexavar.

She said: "The price of the drug is ridiculous. The family are all going to help out, but we might have to remortgage our house. Ordinary people cannot put their hands on £10,000 every three months."

The Health Secretary's stance was criticised by kidney cancer survivor James Whale.

Mr Whale, a former Metro Radio DJ, said: "I am beside myself with rage. Both drugs are one of the biggest steps forward for kidney cancer for years."

Mr Whale, who has set up a website calling for patients to get access to Sutent and Nexavar, said: "It is wrong of her to pass the buck. She is the minister. "If she wanted to make these drugs available, she could do it."

Blyth MP Ronnie Campbell, whose Early-Day Motion on Sutent and Nexavar has attracted the signatures of 20 MPs, said: "A constituent may die because he cannot get a drug that could keep him alive. What is going on here? "The cost is nothing compared to the £69bn they want us to spend on replacing Trident."

Pfizer, which makes Sutent, said more patients in Argentina were getting Sutent than in the UK. It said only about 60 people in the UK were getting the drug.