A TERMINALLY ill cancer patient has pleaded with health chiefs to give him a life extending drug.
Hamstead Marshall resident Ian Walker, aged 68, had a cancerous kidney removed in November and appeared to be recovering.
But when secondary cancer cells spread to his lung recently his doctors at Royal Berkshire Hospital recommended that he should be prescribed a new drug called Sutent to prolong and improve his life.
Guidelines followed by Berkshire West PCT currently state that the drug is too expensive and its effectiveness unproven for kidney cancer patients and the PCT will not administer it unless there are extenuating circumstances.
A Case Review Committee ruled that Mr Walker, a former chief engineer at technology company Quantel, does not qualify.
He said: “If I do not get treatment soon, then my condition will deteriorate very quickly.
“Sutent is the drug of choice for people with my condition.”
A three month course of Sutent costs approximately £7,000. Mr Walker, father of best-selling author Fiona, has been offered an older drug called Interferon Alpha, which costs £600 a month.
He said: “I was absolutely gutted when the specialist told me that my application for Sutent had been turned down, especially as the drug has been prescribed to people in other parts of the country.
“I do not want to go on the cheaper alternative because the doctors tell me that it is not very effective, and it has some nasty side effects, which would leave me with no quality of life at all.”
Sutent has not yet been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and while a ruling is awaited, decisions on whether to administer the drug locally are guided by an interim policy decided by the South Central Priorities committee which is made up of medical professionals, patients and a barrister.
Primary Care Trust spokeswoman Camilla Bashaarat said: “The priorities committee decided in January that Sutent was not economically viable or effective at treating kidney cancer.”
She added that applications for Sutent had been approved in the past, but these were made before the guidelines were changed in January.
The family has appealed against the case’s decision but the PCT has not yet set a date for the hearing.