This is a bit long but please please read on.
My Dad has terminal kidney cancer. This does not respond to chemo and there is no cure. Dad?s had surgery to remove his cancer, but it has now spread to his lungs. Despite all this he has few symptoms and feels well.
There is a drug available that is clinically proven to be effective, likely to keep him feeling well and could more than double his life expectancy (giving him an extra 1-3 years), and has few side effects.
Only one problem - depending on where you live you either get it free, or you have to pay £4000 per month for it and your cancer care.
Your NHS cancer care (consultant, scans the lot) stop's being free if you start buying the drug. This drug, Sutent, and 3 others like it are widely available and prescribed in the rest of Europe and the U.S, only the UK does not provide them as a matter of course. In the UK we have the one of highest spends per head on cancer research -yet we only spend 60% on cancer drugs compared to the rest of Western Europe.
Can you imagine it - you've just been told you have a terminal illness then you have to make a choice about taking a drug that will cost you everything you have worked for (home, business, pension) and thought you'd be leaving your wife and kids, so you can have a bit more time with them, and not spend that time feeling like crap.
Just to remind everyone of Gordon Brown's speech on the 60th anniversary of the NHS;
"As individuals in Britain we know that - should serious illness strike - we will be cared for and the cost of that care will be absorbed not by us as individuals, but by all of us together - in a comprehensive healthcare system publicly funded by taxation"
What a joke!!!
Yesterday the National Institute of Clinical Excellence made an interim decision on funding these drugs in the NHS. They admitted that these drugs were clinically effective, but think they are not "cost effective". They cost the NHS about £2000 per month. This means even less people will now have access to them. One Primary Care Trust has decided that this is such a bad decision that they will fund the drugs regardless. Most of the others will use the decision to cut costs, or weren?t funding these important drugs anyway.
If Dad got run over and was in a high dependency bed costing hundreds of pounds per day no one would question the cost effectiveness of keeping him there. It seems the NHS, NICE and the Department of Health does not value this lives of cancer patients in the same way.
N.I.C.E will make a final decision about funding next January. In the meantime kidney cancer patients need your support.
If you don?t want this for my Dad, or god forbid yourself, your family or anyone else you care about then follow the link below to sign the petition. Please send this to everyone you know. Thanks for your support.
petitions.pm.gov.uk/kidneycancer/
Love Funbags xx