Scrapping cancer drugs will deny hope to thousands, NHS is warned

CANCER experts have raised fears that health officials are to take a “tragic and retrograde” step by denying life-extending treatment to thousands of patients with no other hope.

Rationing bodies are reviewing funding for two of the main drugs for advanced bowel cancer – the secondbiggest cancer killer in the UK.

Leading charities fear the NHS will withdraw funding, cutting short thousands of lives.

In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph they said such moves would set health care back more than a decade.

The step is so backward that hospitals in England would be barred from international clinical trials for bowel cancer, because they would not be able to provide the “gold standard” of chemotherapy that is expected, the senior oncologists said.

In recent years, advances in treatment for bowel cancer have more than doubled survival times for those suffer- ing from one of the most deadly forms of disease.

Patients with tumours that respond to the drugs cetuximab or panitumumab can expect to live 30 months. Fifteen years ago, such patients could expect to live less than a year.

Until now, the treatment has been funded by the NHS Cancer Drugs Fund. But the national drugs fund has just been axed, amid a spiralling financial crisis across the health service.

Responsibility about rationing decisions has been passed to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice).

Leading cancer experts said they fear that Nice will refuse access to drugs that are widely available across Western Europe.

Bowel cancer causes 16,000 deaths a year, and is the fourth most common form of cancer in the UK, with 40,000 diagnoses annually. Around six in 10 of those with advanced disease have tumours that could respond to cetuximab or panitumumab.

But in recent years, the NHS has introduced restrictions on the treatments. Last year, officials stopped funding cetuximab for patients who had already tried other drugs.

The current review is examining use of the drugs as a first-line treatment.

Dr Mark Saunders, of Beating Bowel Cancer, and Dr Rob Glynne-Jones, chairman of the advisory board to Bowel Cancer UK, are among more than 50 experts who fear funding will be axed.

The hospital consultants say such decisions would mean patients would be denied treatments that are routinely available across the world.

“If Nice decides to stop funding these drugs, then we will only be able to offer patients treatments that we had a decade ago,” they warn.

It could create a UK lottery, where patients in Wales and Scotland receive life-extending treatment that is not available in England, the experts say.

A Nice spokesman said at a meeting in January, the review committee felt it did not have all the evidence necessary to make “clinically meaningful” recommendations.

“Both companies are due to present further evidence to the committee at their next meeting on Sept 7. Their decision will be published in the weeks following the meeting,” she said.

SIR – My son is a medical consultant who works hard and long hours and will now have to cover the absences of junior doctors due to go on strike. My daughter is a senior district nurse who also works long hours and weekends, looking after patients who will have operations and appointments cancelled. She gets paid less than half what the junior doctors receive.

The senior medical staff and the nurses will work even harder to cover for the striking doctors. Care will continue. If the nurses chose to strike – and they have had their pay frozen for years – then we would all be in serious trouble. Pamela Jackson Pamber Heath, Hampshire SIR – By continuing to support strike action, junior doctors are fast losing credibility.

To resolve the issue and gain public support, they need to show a lot more compromise and a lot less self-interest. Michael Barclay Newchurch, Kent SIR – Junior doctors are being very badly portrayed in view of the next round of strikes. The public need to know that these dedicated professionals are not striking about money but about the appalling and unsafe working conditions they are expected to endure. Emma Isworth Tenterden, Kent SIR – It is an uncomfortable fact that patients admitted as an emergency to NHS hospitals on a Sunday afternoon almost always receive less prompt diagnostic assessment and initial management than those admitted, say, on a Tuesday morning.

A seven-day fully-functioning health service is clearly something towards which we should aspire.

However, junior doctors already work up to the hours limit imposed by the European Working Time Directive. Forcing seven-day working on them simply means reducing the hours worked within the “normal” week.

Even if every single junior and senior doctor were to work seven-day weeks, this would make hardly any difference to the quality of weekend care. Medical staff, both junior and senior, make up no more than about a quarter of total NHS staff.

For a fully operational seven-day hospital-based health service, as envisaged by the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, all staff groups must be called into action. This list would include outpatient services, ward nurses, receptionists, secretaries, porters, laboratory staff, X-ray and scanning services, catering staff, administration, hospital transport vehicles, laundry services, physiotherapists and speech therapists.

Of course this would be eyewateringly expensive, and I very much doubt if resources of this magnitude will ever be found. Public expectations of the NHS are boundless but people are reluctant to fund it through increased personal taxation. Dr Richard Parrish Drayton, Shropshire