The Velcade Three
You condemned us TO DIE, Miss Hewitt
HEALTH Secretary Patricia Hewitt was confronted by three terminal cancer patients yesterday accusing her of condemning them to death by denying them a new drug.
The three mothers interrupted her speech to protest that English patients do not qualify for the treatment while those in Scotland, Wales, the rest of Europe and America do.
HEALTH Secretary Patricia Hewitt was confronted by three terminal cancer patients yesterday accusing her of condemning them to death by denying them a new drug.
The demo came on a day of humiliation for Labour over health, during which delegates at the annual conference in Manchester passed a motion condemning creeping privatisation in the NHS.
Miss Hewitt also faced noisy protests outside the conference from NHS Logistics staff who went on strike yesterday in protest at job losses caused by the sell-off of the company, which purchases goods for hospitals and other NHS organisations.
She was visibly flustered as the cancer patients challenged her when she rose to address a fringe meeting.
The women, who are suffering from cancer of the bones and bone marrow, have been denied access to Velcade because the NHS rationing body, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, has refused to pay for it in England even though its sister organisations in Scotland and Wales have given the go ahead.
Jacky Pickles, 44, Janice Wrigglesworth, 59, and Marie Morton, 57, interrupted Miss Hewitt and read a statement before handing over a letter in which they warned: 'Our life support system is being switched off.' The women, from Keighley in North Yorkshire, suffer from multiple myeloma.
Velcade, which costs between Pounds 9,000 and Pounds 18,000 for a course of treatment, has been proved to send patients into remission and extend their lives by more than seven years.
Mrs Pickles managed to get a course of treatment on a drug trial earlier this year but has been told she will not be able to use Velcade again since patients can only go on one drug trial. The other two have both been told by their specialists that they will need to take Velcade as their conditions worsen.
Health insurers such as Bupa and PPP pay for it because they believe that it is effective. But in July NICE refused to approve Velcade for use on the NHS, saying it is not ' cost effective'.
Shaking with emotion, Mrs Pickles, who has been a midwife for 25 years, told Miss Hewitt: 'We as English women and myeloma sufferers talking on behalf of the whole myeloma community want it available in England as well.
'We don't want to be discriminated against just because we are English.' The Health Secretary denied responsibility, saying she has no powers to intervene with NICE.
'Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland make their own decisions,' she said.
'In England we have NICE admired and being copied right across the world.
It's certainly not for me to try and make the decision or override or anticipate NICE. I'm not going to do that.' Her comments enraged the three women since Miss Hewitt intervened earlier in the year to circumvent NICE by telling hospitals not to deny their patients the breast cancer drug Herceptin.
Every year around 4,000 patients are diagnosed with myeloma and 3,000 die giving it one of the highest death rates of all cancers. Velcade is the first new treatment in more than ten years.
The Velcade Three, as the women call themselves, have written to Stephen Grosz, the London solicitor who helped breast cancer victim Barbara Clark sue her local primary care trust demanding the new wonder drug Herceptin.
'We will take this all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if we need to,' said Mrs Pickles.
In their letter, the women wrote: 'Our families struggle enough to deal with the disease and its implications, but to know there is an effective treatment currently available that is now going to be taken away from us for whatever reason is like seeing our lifeline slipping away.
Our life support machine is being switched off.' NICE covers England but has proved slower in making decisions than its sister organisations the Scottish Medicines Consortium and the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group.
Since it was set up in 1999 to evaluate the cost effectiveness of new drugs, it has been the subject of intense controversy.
A series of reports by cancer charities and independent health experts have shown that Britain lags behind much of the rest of Europe in licensing and then funding new treatments.
Herceptin was only made available in the UK two years after patients in Europe started to benefit.
Ministers have ordered NICE to speed up its appraisals but critics charge that it gives ministers an easy get out when it comes to funding new drugs because they can say the final decision is no longer the responsibility of the Department of Health. A NICE spokesman said that another ruling on Velcade would be made next month following a review.
Later at the conference, delegates passed a rebel motion, sponsored by the Unison union, condemning 'the breakneck speed of change in the NHS' and the outsourcing of services.
Nurses cheered as the leadership was heavily defeated despite a last ditch appeal from Miss Hewitt, who said 50,000 extra cancer patients have been saved under Labour.
Dozens of delegates stood and waved paper fans reading 'Save Our NHS' as Unison general secretary Dave Prentis warned the NHS was 'moving into crisis'.
He added: 'Labour's reputation as the party most trusted with the NHS will be tested as never before.'
Copyright © The Velcade Three, 2010.