The Cancer
Drugs Fund is to be boosted to £340m from April, but 16 drugs used in
25 different treatments have been axed from the list it will pay for,
NHS England has announced.
Cancer charities and the pharmaceutical companies said scrapping
drugs would harm patients, while critics of the fund said the review did
nothing to make the process of deciding which drugs the NHS should provide more rational or fair.
Some new drugs will join the list, but of the 84 drug treatments
presently funded, some of these are the same drug used in more than one
type of cancer, 25 will be stopped. Three of the drugs to go are used
in advanced breast cancer.
“Thousands of breast cancer patients have today been denied the
chance of improved quality of life and extra time with their loved ones.
“This news is devastating for them,” said one charity chief executive,
Samia al Qadhi at Breast Cancer Care. Like other charities it was critical of the way the fund operates.
“The Cancer Drugs Fund is falling apart when there is still no
long-term solution in place,” she said. “While it is good that another
three breast cancer drugs remain on the list and budget for the Cancer
Drugs Fund will grow, the priority now must be to urgently find a
sustainable system that works. Without this, cancer patients will
continue to be denied access to vital treatment, they deserve better
than this.”
Bowel cancer and blood cancer charities also lined up to criticise decisions to rule out paying for drugs in their fields.
NHS England launched the review of the Cancer Drugs Fund because it
was seriously overspent. It was launched in 2011 as a £200m-a-year pool
of money to pay for new cancer drugs that were turned down by the
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) because of their very high cost.
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