Health
trust spends £300,000
denying expensive cancer drug
Gazette & Herald
www.gazetteandherald.co.uk
22nd February 2007
By Hayley Court
Lyneham parishioner Sam Wright has revealed Swindon
Primary Care Trust spent £300,000 fighting cancer sufferer
Anne-Marie Rogers' battle for life saving drug Herceptin.
Mr Wright, of Lyneham Village, appealed under the Freedom
of Information Act for details of the cost for the
case when he saw the story on television in 2005. Mrs Rogers
of Swindon lost her bid to get the drug last February.
In the first case of its kind to reach the the High Court,
the judge ruled that Swindon
NHS trust had not acted unlawfully
when it denied the 53-year-old mother of two the drug to
treat her early stage breast cancer.
Swindon PCT had argued
that it would only fund the drug for patients in "exceptional circumstances",
and that the drug was not licensed for the treatment of
early-stage breast cancer, which is the kind Ms Rogers,
of Swindon, has. Pensioner Mr Wright said he was fed up with hearing aboput
how Ms Rogers had been treated, branding the costs a tax
on illness. The 62-year-old said: "I
saw the story on the news and thought, How can they deny
this poor woman
the drug?'.
"With anything like this they should have assessed
the costs; considering the drug costs £20,000 they
could have paid for the woman to have a course of treatment."
Although Herceptin is licensed in both England and Wales
to treat advanced breast cancer, pressure has continued
to mount for the NHS to prescribe it for patients suffering
with the early stages of the disease. Mr Wright said: "It
irks me that this amount of taxpayers' money can go on
a case like this. It was a total waste when all they
had to do was agree to treat Anne-Marie but I suppose when
you are a
solicitor you can never lose can you. It is just cash in
their back pockets."
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