Patients win cancer drug plea (From The Northern Echo)

Patients win cancer drug plea

9:37am Monday 9th February 2009 in

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A CANCER charity has reassured patients that most people who need an expensive new drug on the NHS will get it after all.

Last week The Northern Echo reported on the successful conclusion to its End NHS Injustice campaign when the Government’s medicines watchdog finally agreed to approve NHS funding for the advanced kidney cancer drug, Sutent, which costs more than £25,000 a year for each patient.

For the past two years, The Northern Echo has highlighted the struggles of cancer patients across the region who have tried – and in some cases failed – to get NHS funding for a drug which can extend lives.

Last week some national newspapers carried reports suggesting that the new guidelines produced by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) would restrict access to Sutent to patients who had not been treated by any other cancer drugs.

One national newspaper calculated that between 25 and 60 per cent of advanced kidney cancer sufferers would be excluded from NHS treatment because of a rule that Sutent could only be given as a “firstline”

treatment.

But last night Pat Hanlon, campaign coordinator for the Kidney Cancer UK charity, said he has established with Nice that patients with advanced kidney cancer who had been on the previous standard drug, interferon, would still be able to go on to Sutent.

“We have been reassured that would be the way it has been interpreted,” Dr Hanlon said.

“We would hope that the NHS primary care trusts start paying for patients to go on Sutent straight away.”

The maker of Sutent, Pfizer, has agreed to provide the first cycle of treatment, worth £3,139, free.