We owe these women six more months

WHAT will you do in the next six months? How many times will you hug the people you love? Will you be a shoulder to cry on for a friend or family member? How often will you laugh or dance or learn something new?

Now imagine that those six months were your last – and they could be snatched away. Wouldn’t you fight with every breath to keep them?

This week we’ve been publishing the stories of four women who have joined forces with Breast Cancer Now to campaign for wider access to the drug Kadcyla.

Next week, the Scottish Medicines Consortium are meeting to discuss whether it should be available on the NHS. It’s expensive, at around £90,000 a year, but can extend the lives of women suffering from incurable breast cancer by an average of six months.

At the moment, only a few women in Scotland have been successful in obtaining Kadcyla through individual patient treatment requests.

In this day and age, that’s a scandal. It’s obscene that vast amounts of taxpayers’ cash can be squandered on trams, on government buildings, on vanity projects, on bank bailouts and first-class travel for politicians but we can’t find the money for one of the fundamentals of humanity – caring for someone’s life.

To sign the petition calling for Kadcyla to be available to those who need it, please take a minute to go to breastcancernow.org/ unlockkadcyla

BATTLE Mum-of-two Lesley Stephen, who had to pay for Kadcyla herself, supports campaign