A MUM with terminal cancer has been chosen to represent patients in the fight to make a life-extending drug available on the NHS.

Barbara Moss will speak out at a national review by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in Manchester tomorrow.

Mrs Moss, aged 54, of Aconbury Close, off Newtown Road, Worcester, believes it was Avastin that saved her life, shrinking a tumour in her bowel so it became operable. Because it was not available on the NHS, she had to pay for the drug privately. She hopes to persuade health chiefs to make Avastin available on the NHS.

Mrs Moss was given just three to five months to live when she was diagnosed with bowel cancer in November 2006.

Three years later she is still alive – a ‘miracle’ she attributes largely to Avastin which attacks cancer cells in the same way as the immune system attacks a virus.

Mrs Moss said: “I am convinced this drug saved my life. I hope that NICE takes the right decision so other people don’t have to go through the hardships I had to go through and gives something back to Bowel Cancer UK which helped me so much.

“The case I will make is for a combination of chemotherapy and Avastin for treating bowel cancer.

“This drug has given me my life back. The quality of the time I have had has been so precious.”

It was leaders at Bowel Cancer UK, the national bowel cancer charity, who selected Mrs Moss as a patient representative to address the meeting.

Ian Beaumont, campaign director, said there was no one better placed to advocate a change in policy than Barbara Moss as “living proof of it’s positive benefits”.

Mrs Moss, who will be accompanied by her husband Mark, will also be taking along a copy of her book, Who’s Been Peeping in My Bed?, which describes her experiences and has already sold 100 copies.

All profits from it are to be split between Bowel Cancer UK and St Richard’s Hospice in Wildwood Drive, Worcester.

Mrs Moss was paid £13,658 of her medical bill by Worcestershire Primary Care Trust, which is now called NHS Worcester-shire. The figure represents the cost of the care she would have received free on the NHS had she not opted to pay privately for Avastin as an extra top-up drug. It has not refunded the cost of her Avastin treatment, which came to about £9,000.

A decision on whether the drug will be approved is expected in about two months’ time.

Mrs Moss’s cancer returned in May last year. She is in remission but has been told her cancer will return.