Campaigner welcomes cancer drug decision

A CAMPAIGNER who lost her husband and mother-in-law to pancreatic cancer has welcomed a decision from a health watchdog to allow patients access to a new treatment option.

Maggie Watts, from Scunthorpe, started campaigning to raise awareness after discovering doctors couldn’t offer her husband Kevin, who died in 2009, any better chance of survival than they did his mother 40 years earlier.

Her latest campaign – which raised 112,000 signatures on the change.org website – was to get the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to reinstate a drug for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer called Abraxane. Although it was removed in England in 2015, it was still available in Scotland and Wales.

NICE has now announced patients will be allowed access to the treatment, which extends life on average by 2.4 months, although some patients have lived for two years. Mrs Watts said: “It was wrong that patients in England – and 83 per cent of patients with pancreatic cancer are in England – were not being given the same opportunity to extend their lives and have a little more time with their loved ones at the end of their lives.”

Chief executive of Pancreatic Cancer UK Alex Ford said: “We are celebrating, after years of campaigning alongside patients, families and other charities for this treatment to be made available across the UK on the NHS.

“This landmark decision will give eligible advanced patients the chance of living two months longer after diagnosis, which for many patients will mean that they live for twice as long.”