HOW COME WE GET SECOND-BEST CANCER DRUGS?

Vicky Phelan tells the Mail of her new campaign, pointing out that big pharma firms are here... but Irish patients don’t get the benefit

VICKY Phelan has questioned why our cancer patients are not getting the best possible drug treatments – despite Ireland being home to some of the world’s top pharma firms.

Ms Phelan, who exposed the CervicalCheck scandal, also revealed signficant developments in her plan to set up – and personally fund – a cancer care expert who will help patients around the country get ground-breaking drug therapies. ‘It’s shocking when you think of it, not just

that we have fewer treatment options here... but that most of the big pharmaceutical companies are based in Ireland, and we still don’t have those options. That’s the bit that really gets to me,’ she told the Mail.

The mother of two said there are many people who are given terminal diagnoses who are not told about all their options. She cited her own battle to get treated with wonder drug Pembrolizumab, which she recently said she had to ‘pester’, ‘push’ and fundraise to get access to.

‘Back in February when I was told my cancer was terminal, I was given 12 months to live with treatment, six months without,’ the mother of two said.

‘To be honest, if I hadn’t started the immunotherapy treatment, the predictions were accurate, the timeframe they gave me was correct.

‘I went without treatment until April and had to go off and research it myself. If I hadn’t done the research and started this treatment, I’d be in a very different situation now. But not everyone is in a position to do what I did.’

Earlier this year, pharma giant Merck announced it was planning to begin manufacturing Pembrolizumab – which is marketed as Keytruda – here in Ireland.

Ms Phelan is now hoping to create a care worker position that would help inform patients about multiple drug treatment options. ‘I had a first meeting with the Irish Cancer Society and Cancer Trials Ireland. They’re putting together a proposal and I’m hoping that a position – funded by me – will be created where we’ll have someone rotating between the different hospitals providing information to patients about their options.

Ms Phelan was awarded a €2.5million settlement in her case against CPL Laboratories in Austin, Texas, in May.

In the foreword to the report on the Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme – which was published on Wednesday – Dr Gabriel Scally attributes the emergence of the scandal to the ‘extraordinary determination of Vicky Phelan not to be silenced’.

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