A CANCER survivor has compared a final decision not to provide the ‘miracle drug’ which saved her life on the NHS with being hit by a nail.

Mother-of-two Bar-bara Moss, aged 55, of Aconbury Close, Wor-cester, criticised the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for not allowing Avastin in combination with che-motherapy for bowel cancer patients.

NICE announced its final draft guidance on the drug, manufactured by Roche Phar-maceuticals, today.

Mrs Moss, who has been an outspoken critic of the ‘God-like’ powers of NICE, had to cash in her pension to pay for Avastin, also called bevacizumab, costing her £9,000.

She attributes her survival to the drug which she says shrank a tumour in her bowel, allowing it to become operable after she was told she had months to live in November 2006.

But NICE bosses say the drug is too expensive and could cost the NHS as much as £135 million per year. A course of Avastin costs about £20,800 for each patient and there are about 6,500 patients a year. Avastin would only add about six weeks to a patient’s life, according to NICE.

Mrs Moss said: “This hurts twice – like hitting a nail in hard. The only hope for any cancer patient is to fight with their own strength but meanwhile the progress with the cancer drugs fund set up this month is giving some hope to some patients in lightening the dreadful bureaucracy that I had to go through.”

NICE chief executive Sir Andrew Dillon, said: “Bevacizumab (Avastin) is a very expensive drug and so patients and NHS should expect substantial benefits from using it.

“The evidence we have suggests that patients receiving bev-acizumab and chem-otherapy for this indication may survive on average for six weeks longer than patients receiving chemotherapy and placebo.

“This means half of those patients who receive any benefit, will receive less than six extra weeks of life.”