Fears over NHS funding gap for new drugs

The BBC reports today that cancer doctors fear the NHS will not be able to afford the growing number of new drugs being developed to fight cancer, and that patient face having to pay for more drugs themselves.

Responding to a BBC questionnaire, 180 specialist cancer doctors have said that they are either worried or very worried about the situation.

Some drugs, like Herceptin for breast cancer, have won NICE backing as being cost effective for the health service. But others like Tarceva, which can extend the life of lung cancer patients, have been turned down.

Specialists like Nick James, professor of clinical oncology in Birmingham, believe the gap between what the NHS can fund and what is available is going to get bigger.

"The drugs in the pipeline are going to cause even more pressure. I think politicians need to be honest and say this gap is going to be there and we need to look at ways of filling it," he said.

Stephen Allen is one patient who already pays £3,000 every six weeks for drugs alone. Mr Allen is terminally ill with kidney and lung cancer and had been told he only had six months to live.

NHS funding for the drug recommended for him was refused, with letters explaining the health service has limited resources and faces very tough decisions.

He said: "I didn't realise we had to pay for certain drugs. If they'd said from the start there are certain drugs on the list which aren't available to you, we probably would have understood a little bit easier the situation they're in."

So Mr Allen is spending savings he wanted to leave for his wife in the hope of living to see the first birthday of his youngest grandchild, two-month-old Annabelle.

Cancer charities also remain concerned about the issue of drugs, and continue to campaign for funding for individual medicines. An appeal on Tarceva is due before NICE this summer.

Many also want a much more transparent debate about how much health service money should be allocated to cutting edge cancer treatments.

Dr Jesme Fox, medical director of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, says she is appalled some people spend the last few months of their life in a desperate fight for NHS funding.

The average time from diagnosis to death for lung cancer patients is six months.

"If they're not going to be allowed to access drugs that improve survival by a few months, or improve their quality of life, we need to have an honest debate about how we're going to have to fund these things."

While it's true that the NHS has received a record increase in funding in recent years, it's still clearly not enough to meet many people's treatment needs.

So is it appropriate for MPs to vote billions of pounds away to the EU while this remains the situation? Is it acceptable to waste £2.5bn more a year on an organisation that cannot get its accounts approved by auditors, while people are denied relief-giving - even life-saving - drugs by the NHS if they can't afford to pay for them?

Can such an attitude possibly be compatible with claiming support for public services? MPs will have trouble making that stick, come the next election - if they approve the unjustified 60% increase in funds for the EU.