A GRIEVING daughter has denounced the postcode lottery of UK cancer care after a drug denied to her mother was finally approved across the whole NHS.

Kidney cancer patient Barbara Selby, 65, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, died in September after two unsuccessful attempts to persuade health bosses to pay for a life-extending drug called Sutent.

Despite being routinely prescribed in Europe and the US, Sutent has not generally been available on the NHS in England.

But after an appeal by the drug’s manufacturers, backed by several cancer charities, the Government medicines watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or Nice, yesterday reversed an earlier decision and ruled that Sutent should be available on the NHS to anyone who needs it.

Last night, Mrs Selby’s daughter, former nurse Clare Whiteside, 36, who also lives in Richmond, said: “I am pleased for other people who will now get this drug, but this is such a kick in the teeth.”

Mrs Whiteside, who plans to train as an NHS paramedic, said: “They fobbed us off for so long and now they have changed their mind. How can they do that? It just makes them look stupid. It makes you think it was all about saving money.”

Mrs Selby’s cancer specialist at the James Cook University Hospital made two attempts to persuade North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust (PCT) to pay for the drug, which can cost more than £25,000 a year, on the grounds of her exceptional circumstances.

However, despite Mrs Selby having a rare form of advanced kidney cancer, a PCT panel decided against funding the drug on clinical and costeffectiveness grounds.

However, patients treated by the same consultant at James Cook, but who happened to live a few miles away in County Durham, would qualify for Sutent. This followed a decision 18 months ago by the North of England Cancer Network to fund any North-East patient who met the criteria for the drug.

That decision followed a campaign by The Northern Echo to highlight the plight of cancer patients denied access to modern drugs available in other developed countries.

In the first half of 2007, The Northern Echo highlighted the plight of kidney cancer patient Kathleen Devonport, 64, from Chilton, County Durham, who was initially refused funding for Sutent.

After further publicity in the Echo about her case, funding was agreed by County Durham PCT and a few weeks later this was extended to the whole of the North-East, the first regional group of PCTs to agree funding. It is expected to benefit more than 2,000 people a year.

Nice agreed to allow the NHS to prescribe Sutent after the manufacturer, Pfizer, agreed to provide the first cycle of treatment, costing, £3,139, free.

Praise for Echo campaign

CAMPAIGNER Rose Woodward, who has helped kidney cancer patients get access to Sutent on the NHS, said The Northern Echo’s End NHS Injustice campaign in 2007 played a crucial role in changing opinion.

“When The Northern Echo publicised the cases of people like Kathleen Devonport, from County Durham, and Ken Potts, from Blyth, it was really the start of things.

From there, it all took off,”

said Mrs Woodward, who founded the Kidney Cancer Support Network and runs it from her home in Cornwall.

“I want to say a huge thank you to your paper.

“You are the ones that gave the snowball the biggest push,” she said.

Mrs Woodward said the decision by the Northern Cancer Network to fund Sutent on the NHS in summer 2007 was critical. “The North-East network were the first ones that we turned. I am absolutely convinced that was the start of the avalanche,”

she said. “About 30 PCTs have agreed to routinely fund Sutent, then about 75 per cent of the rest have been forced into funding individuals after they used the appeal procedure.”

While some patients died without getting access to Sutent, Mrs Woodward said others had their lives extended, including one patient in Cornwall who has been on the drug for two-and-a-half years.

“The approval of Sutent is wonderful news for Britain’s kidney cancer patients, but one that is shamefully long overdue,” she said.

In the US, where Sutent is the first-line treatment for advanced kidney cancer, patients who took part in the original clinical trials are still enjoying life four to five years on, she said.