Go-ahead on drugs top-ups hailed by mother (From Worcester News)

Go-ahead on drugs top-ups hailed by mother

1:30pm Thursday 6th November 2008 in

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A MOTHER who spent £21,000 of her pension money on cancer drugs has welcomed a landmark decision.

Barbara Moss of Worcester backs plans announced on Tuesday to allow patients to pay privately for medicines while still receiving NHS care.

In the past patients who paid for private drugs not available on the NHS lost their right to free NHS care.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson said many people viewed the existing system as “a cruel procedure”.

He also pledged to speed up the process of approving new drugs for use on the NHS.

Recommendations include steps to allow the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) greater flexibility in approving more expensive drugs for terminally ill patients.

Mrs Moss, aged 53, of Aconbury Close, Worcester, who suffered from bowel cancer spent £21,000 on NHS treatment after taking the private drug Avastin after being given a bleak prognosis of just three months to live by doctors. The retired teacher said: “I welcome the decision. I used my pension and money from my mum, who is 87-years-old, to pay for a course of treatment with Avastin, but this left me without the NHS treatment I had previously been getting for free – I had to go completely private.”

Mrs Moss said the private drug that she spent £10,500 on reduced the size of a tumour and she was then able to have an operation to have it removed. She believes the private drug Avastin lengthened and improved the quality of her life, but was disappointed that it negated her free NHS treatment.

Mrs Moss had to pay for the blood tests, aftercare, oncologist appointments and check ups that she had previously received on the NHS.

She said: "Financial worries make it worse. I felt selfish using the money. I’ve got a family who need money.”

Mrs Moss believed she had beaten bowel cancer after the drug Avastin helped to shrink it until it became operable.

The tumour was removed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham on October 4 last year. But the mother-of-two was shocked to find the cancer had returned in May following a scan and is now in her lymph nodes, chest and neck.

She has been told she has a 10 per cent chance of survival.