Lottery with life or death jackpot

Feb 19 2006 By Ken Oxley, The Sunday Sun

How do pen-pushers who may have condemned cancer patient Ann Marie Rogers to death sleep at night?

The 54-year-old mum-of-three has been refused the drug Herceptin by Swindon Primary Care Trust, even though other trusts across the UK have prescribed it to patients with the same type of cancer.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the plight of cancer patient Jayne Sullivan, who was forced to sleep in the foyer of the Welsh Assembly building to draw attention to her battle to be prescribed the drug. Others have gone through similar ordeals.

What's going on? How can health service bureaucrats justify making desperate cancer patients feel like state spongers?

Many people abuse their bodies to such an extent they require expensive treatment or even complex organ transplants.

Women with breast cancer don't fall into any such category. Yet if they live in the wrong part of the country they could, like Ann Marie, wind up literally begging for their lives.

It is unforgivable that we should put them through this.

At £22,800 per treatment, Herceptin is not cheap. But Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has said trusts should not refuse the drug solely on cost. Yet why else could Swindon PCT have turned Ann Marie down?

She has an aggressive form of cancer called Her-2 . . . the type that Herceptin has been shown to benefit.

True, it's not yet licensed for early stage breast cancer, but this is a mere technicality which most trusts are sensibly ignoring because of the drug's amazing results in trials.

This shameful postcode lottery with people's lives must stop. Herceptin should be made available to anyone who needs it . . . and sod the cost!