Two thousand more cancer patients a year will be able to access potentially life-extending treatments after the NHS added three more drugs to those available through the Cancer Drugs Fund.
Breast cancer campaigners said that women gaining access to trastuzumab emtansine through the £200m-a-year fund’s list of approved drugs in England was “a huge step forward”.
Dr Caitlin Palframan, senior policy manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said the drug “has been shown to extend life by up to six months in HER2-positive secondary breast cancer patients, and with more manageable side-effects than alternative drugs. It has the potential to provide women with a better quality of life in their final months than existing treatments, which could make a significant difference.”
NHS England estimated that 1,100 women a year would gain access to the drug, 500-1,000 men to the prostate cancer drug Radium-223 dichloride, and about 70-120 people to dabrafenib, which is for patients with unrectable or metastatic skin cancers.
The Cancer Drugs Fund was introduced by the coalition in 2011 after an outcry over the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence denying cancer sufferers access to some expensive new medications it believed did not represent value for money. The fund has led to 38,000 people receiving drugs since then.
Prof Peter Clark, chair of NHS England’s chemotherapy clinical reference group, said: “These new additions to the list demonstrate NHS England’s commitment to achieving maximum benefit to patients from the annual £200m Cancer Drugs Fund.”
NHS adds new cancer drugs to approved list
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