Health trust spends £300,000 denying expensive cancer drug (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Health trust spends £300,000 denying expensive cancer drug

5:08pm Wednesday 21st February 2007 in Swindon By Hayley Court

Lyneham parish councillor Sam Wright has revealed Swindon Primary Care Trust spent £300,000 fighting cancer sufferer Anne-Marie Rogers' battle for life saving drug Herceptin.

Mr Wright, of Lyneham Village, appealed under the Freedom of Information Act for details of the cost for the case when he saw the story on television in 2005.

Mrs Rogers of Swindon lost her bid to get the drug last February.

In the first case of its kind to reach the the High Court, the judge ruled that Swindon NHS trust had not acted unlawfully when it denied the 53-year-old mother of two the drug to treat her early stage breast cancer.

Swindon PCT had argued that it would only fund the drug for patients in "exceptional circumstances", and that the drug was not licensed for the treatment of early-stage breast cancer, which is the kind Ms Rogers, of Swindon, has.

Pensioner Mr Wright said he was fed up with hearing aboput how Ms Rogers had been treated, branding the costs a tax on illness.

The 62-year-old said: "I saw the story on the news and thought, How can they deny this poor woman the drug?'.

"With anything like this they should have assessed the costs; considering the drug costs £20,000 they could have paid for the woman to have a course of treatment."

Although Herceptin is licensed in both England and Wales to treat advanced breast cancer, pressure has continued to mount for the NHS to prescribe it for patients suffering with the early stages of the disease.

Mr Wright said: "It irks me that this amount of taxpayers' money can go on a case like this.

"It was a total waste when all they had to do was agree to treat Anne-Marie but I suppose when you are a solicitor you can never lose can you. It is just cash in their back pockets."