UK cancer drug access under fire again

The problem of patient access to innovative drugs has been renewed in the UK, following controversy over decisions by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the body that recommends treatments to be made available on the National Health Service in England and Wales, concerning drugs for a variety of conditions, including most recently, Alzheimer's disease and wet age-related macular degeneration (Marketletters passim). This time the problem centers on the apparent anomaly that different NHS patients being treated at the same state hospital are being provided with, or denied, an oncology drug according to their home address and not the particular circumstances of their condition.

John McNamara, a multiple myeloma patient from Harrogate in the North of England, has been refused access to Velcade (bortezomib), developed by US biopharmaceutical firm Millennium Pharmaceuticals in collaboration with fellow USA-based health care major Johnson & Johnson. According to the UK's public broadcaster, the BBC, Mr McNamara lives in the North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust, which has informed a local hospital that it will not fund the treatment. However, other patients at the St James' Hospital, Leeds, which is in West Yorkshire, are provided with Velcade that is funded by their PCTs.

J&J refund deal not applied by PCT