Still room in NHS for a little compassion

The decision by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) to make available the life-prolonging drug Kadcyla on the National Health Service will not only be welcomed by those who live with incurable breast cancer.

Those who feel the point of the NHS is to offer the best care, no matter the cost, will also be relieved.

In a system in which patients are seen as individual people, with friends and family and lives still to lead, rather than figures on a balance sheet, drugs such as Kadcyla would be freely available as a matter of course.

A price cannot be placed on the ability to gain an otherwise unobtainable extra few months with loved ones – memories made in that time could prove a massive comfort to those left behind when the cruellest of diseases takes its final toll.

The knowledge that such help is at hand will also be a comfort to women who live with the threat of aggressive breast cancer, even if they do not have it.

Of course, we no longer live in a world where such decisions can be taken lightly – there will always be a financial cost and perhaps the availability of Kadcyla will restrict the ability to give other drugs the same status. But weighing such matters can come later. For now, it is worth celebrating a day when breast cancer patients in the worst of circumstances were given a crumb of comfort and treated like humans, not statistics.