NHS won’t fund £48k treatment to give ovarian patients an extra year
EXPERTS have called for a rethink of the way cancer drugs are paid for after a revolutionary treatment was refused NHS funding.
Olaparib – a new drug which extends the lives of ovarian cancer patients by an average of 11 months – has been refused access to two different funding streams.
Some who take the £48,000 a year drug may even live beyond five years, trial data shows.
The treatment is the result of two decades of work by British scientists, and is part of a new class of drugs which target a tumour’s ‘Achilles’ heel’ without harming healthy cells.
Olaparib helps patients who have a faulty BRCA gene, carried by Angelina Jolie. The actress underwent a double mastectomy and had her ovaries removed after testing positive for the BRCA1 mutation, which significantly increases cancer risk.
Professor Paul Workman, chief executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, called the decision not to fund olaparib a ‘slap in the face for British science’. The drug, developed by UK pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, is already being taken by 1,000 women in the US and patients across Europe.
But yesterday Nice, the NHS rationing body, issued draft guidance saying hospitals should not pay for olaparib, because at £4,000 a month its cost is ‘too high for the benefit it may provide’. And ten days ago the £200million-ayear Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), set up in 2011 to pay for cuttingedge treatments, also refused to fund it. Nice has launched a public consultation on whether the drug should be paid for, with a final decision expected later this year.
Last night Lisa Anson, AstraZeneca UK president, said it had offered the NHS a discount.
Professor Workman said: ‘ We need to see more creativity about how officials work to fund these drugs ... this is an exciting, safe, innovative drug which should have been funded.’
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘ Nice hasn’t finished considering olaparib and anyone with more evidence ... should respond to the consultation.’
Professor Peter Clark, of the Cancer Drugs Fund, said it was important to ‘prioritise the drugs that offer the best value’.
‘Slap in the face for British science’