THOUSANDS of terminally ill cancer patients could be given extra months to live after a health watchdog last night announced new rules to improve access to drugs.

The step comes after more than a year of The Northern Echo’s End NHS Injustice campaign, which has highlighted the struggle faced by cancer patients across the North-East and North Yorkshire to obtain new drugs.

Nice (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) last night issued guidelines to improve access to lifeextending treatments for people who are terminally ill and not expected to live more than two years.

Macmillan Cancer Support said 10,000 cancer patients a year could benefit from the move.

The new guidance refers to drugs licensed for any terminal illness affecting small numbers of patients. These drugs are usually deemed too expensive by Nice. Last night’s announcement was welcomed by cancer patients and their families across the region.

Kathleen Devonport, from Chilton, near Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, spent seven months trying to persuade her primary care trust to pay for the drug Sutent to slow her advanced kidney cancer.

She only received the drugs she needed when The Northern Echo publicised her plight.

Last night, Mrs Devonport, 65, said: “I am no longer on the drug, because if it stops working, you are taken off it.”

She added: “This is a step in the right direction.

“For those who need the drugs, they should be given them – they should be given a chance.

“There is nothing worse than just waiting when you need a drug and can’t get it. It is really depressing.

“There will be a lot of people relieved about this.”

Dave Hill, 46, from Darlington, helped persuade primary care trusts in the area to fund potential wonder-drug Tarceva for lung cancer patients ahead of the rest of England.

But by the time he received it, he was too ill to benefit and he died in November 2007. A year on from the anniversary of his death, Nice announced it would allow the NHS to prescribe the drug.

Last night his widow, Tina, said: “To be truthful, I think it is about time they (Nice) started doing something. People are having to struggle and it is not fair. It is bad enough coping with the illness without struggling to get medication.”

The new rules mean the drugs will have to meet set criteria to be approved on the NHS, including having to show they extend life usually by at least three months compared with standard NHS treatment.

Nice chief executive Andrew Dillon said: “These treatments are expensive and clinical experience will be limited, therefore if one of these kinds of treatments is recommended, the institute will normally recommend to the Department of Health that a data collection exercise is considered to assess the extent to which the anticipated survival gains are realised when they are used in routine practice.

“The outcome of the exercise will be evaluated.”

Rachel Rowson, policy manager at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “New guidelines for allowing drugs for end-of-life treatment and rarer cancers is something which Macmillan has been campaigning for.

“We hope this will now mean that people with rarer cancers and those at the endof- life stage get access to the drugs they need on the NHS.

“Macmillan estimates that 10,000 patients a year will benefit from this.”

Stella Pendleton, executive director of the Rarer Cancers Forum, said: “Nice’s decision to allow greater flexibility when considering life extending treatments will benefit many thousands of patients.

“However, there are many treatments which can never be assessed by Nice in the first place because of the rarity of the cancers they treat.”