A CANCER survivor has told health bosses there must be greater fairness when it comes to access to life-extending cancer drugs to prevent a postcode lottery which will cost lives.

Mother-of-two Barbara Moss made her presence felt at a meeting of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) in London this month.

Mrs Moss, aged 56, of Aconbury Close, off Newtown Road, Worcester, has campaigned vociferously for cancer drugs to be made available on the NHS and for more standardised use of a Cancer Drugs Fund, a national fund set up in April to support people battling the illness.

Mrs Moss told Nice bosses that they should make sure Strategic Health Authorities are approving applications for funding treatment if clinicians think it in the best interest of patients. She also stressed how much cancer drugs had helped her. She is still alive four-and-a-half years after she was given months to life in November 2006. She was diagnosed with bowel cancer which had spread to her liver.

Mrs Moss said: “Access to cancer drugs should be fair for everyone in England and Wales. It isn’t. Before we had a postcode lottery. It’s a different type of postcode lottery now. It was difficult to get a word in but I did. I said it just wasn’t fair that people cannot access the drugs fund.” Mrs Moss said the national review of improving access to medicines on the NHS by Professor Mike Richards in November 2008 had still not eliminated the postcode lottery with some areas of the country, including the north east, north west and the West Midlands making much better use of the fund than others.

Mrs Moss said: “There are people dying who would have a chance if they lived in the right area.”

She also said south Worcestershire only had one oncologist when the recommended number was five.

As reported in your Worcester News Barbara Moss had to pay for the cancer drug Avastin which she says saved her life, using £21,000 and financial support from her mother, now 90 years old, to fund her treatment.