Terminal cancer will not stop me working

10:21am Friday 8th December 2006

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A COUNTY councillor says it's "business as usual" despite being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Mike Oborski, who has been a Liberal county councillor for more than 30 years, was diagnosed in September as having lung and liver cancer. Doctors have told him there is nothing they can do for him.

The blow came just six months after the 60-year-old, who lives in Kidderminster, was given the all-clear from colon cancer after surgery last year.

But Coun Oborski, who is also a Wyre Forest district councillor, said he is going to carry on his work in the community as before.

He said: "My motto is that it is business as usual.

"I don't feel greatly depressed or that I need to blame anyone because it is something that just happens. There are worse disasters and young people dying all over the world that haven't had the the life chances that I've had.

"Yes, once you've got it, it changes everything. But you either curl up or you carry on as normal."

Coun Oborski, a teacher for 26 years and Consul of the Republic of Poland for the West Midlands, is receiving chemotherapy every fortnight at the Priory private hospital in Birmingham, where he is also receiving a drug called Avastin. But he said he is angry that, although it has passed clinical trials and is available in other European countries, the drug is not available on the NHS in the UK because it has not yet been reviewed by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE).

The former mayor of Kidderminster said: "In 85 per cent of cases it works to improve quality of life for cancer patients like me yet they won't pay for it on the NHS. It's disgusting.

"I feel very angry and sorry that there are people living within my ward who are probably in the same position as me but unable to get the drugs that can help them."

A spokeswoman for Worcestershire Primary Care Trust said: "We do not currently fund the drug Avastin for cancer treatment. We follow the recommendation on drugs from NICE and presently this drug is under review by them. Until NICE provides advice we look at all the evidence ourselves and make a decision based on that evidence."