Burstow grills Health Secretary on cancer drugs for Sutton women

Sutton and Cheam MP Paul Burstow last week grilled the Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt, over the availability of breast cancer drug Herceptin for women living in Sutton.

Paul Burstow MP, who has been putting lobbying Ministers and local health bosses for the drug to be made available to all women who stand to benefit from its use living within the Sutton and Merton PCT catchment area, tackled Patricia Hewitt to clarify her position on the issue during a House of Commons Health Committee evidence session last Thursday.

Following Paul Burstow's quizzing, the Health Secretary told him that local women who have been denied the drug on cost grounds should go back to their doctors and get local health bosses to re-evaluate their cases.

The evidence session followed a statement made by Hewitt earlier in the week, in which she said women should not be denied Herceptin on the grounds of costs.

Herceptin, is currently only widely available to women in advanced stages HER-2 type breast cancer disease. However the drug is also widely considered by experts to be a breakthrough in the treatment of early stages of HER-2 breast cancer, and to significantly help prevent re-occurrence of the disease.

Paul Burstow MP said:

"This is a victory for local women, who until now have been refused Herceptin because health bosses say it is too expensive, effectively putting their lives at risk.

"On the direct advice of the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, local women who stand to gain from the drug but have been turned down for financial reasons or because they were told they were 'not an exceptional case' should go back to their doctors and have their cases reviewed."

ENDS.

Notes to editor

1. Paul Burstow MP, a member of the House of Commons Health Committee, questioned the Secretary of State for Health at an evidence session held on Thursday 27 October 2005.

For the relevant exchange, see below:

Q106 Mr Burstow: Can we come on to one final thing which I think a couple of us definitely want to ask questions about. Can we make sure that when the note on finance is done that it does cover things like recovery plans and how many there are now compared to previous years and the five monthly forecasts that you have had submitted from SHAs. It would be very useful to have that. The question I want to ask is about the very welcome statement made on Tuesday at the Breakthrough breast cancer event about Herceptin, about the fact that PCTs should not refuse to fund Herceptin on the basis of cost grounds. Can you tell us how that is going to be communicated to PCTs and how its implementation is going to be monitored? Certainly at least one of my constituents, Emma Kearns, who has currently been told that she will not get this particular drug on the grounds that she is not an exceptional case, wants to know whether she is going to benefit from that announcement because she does not understand what it means to be told that she is not an exceptional case when her life is at stake.

Ms Hewitt: This is an enormously important issue. We have seen women with breast cancer who could potentially benefit from Herceptin faced with this very difficult situation when, of course, the drug is not licensed for early treatment and has not been through a NICE evaluation. A couple of weeks ago, as you know, I announced that we would both speed up the NICE evaluation but also immediately take steps to get the testing facilities in place for women who have been diagnosed now who could benefit from Herceptin when the rest of their treatment has been concluded around next summer. What I have now done is to build on what already happens with unlicensed or unevaluated drugs where, of course, the doctor has always been free to prescribe them, obviously in discussion with the individual patient. I have made it clear, and of course we are communicating that directly to primary care trusts, that where a clinician, having discussed the risks with the woman, comes to the PCT and says, "I believe this is the right treatment for this individual woman", the PCT should not be rejecting that on the grounds of cost. That was hugely welcomed, of course, by the breast cancer charities and by a lot of patients. We are in this awkward period, if you like, where we have started seeing the results of the clinical trials but the licensing application has not even been made yet by Roche, and I continue to urge them to get that in as quickly as possible. NICE stand ready to begin the evaluation as soon as that licensing application is made so that the two things will run very much in parallel. Once there is a NICE evaluation, if that is positive then the normal rule will apply that within three months we would expect all PCTs to be following it.

Q107 Mr Burstow: Does that mean that for any of our constituents who have been recommended by their local cancer hospital, in my case the Royal Marsden, for Herceptin as being a beneficial treatment to have, if they are then turned down by their PCT on the grounds that they are not an exceptional case, the PCT should now revisit such decisions?

Ms Hewitt: I think any woman in that position should simply discuss that again with her doctor. One of the reasons why I wanted to make this announcement this week was we have already had a number of primary care trusts saying, "Where the clinician comes to us in this situation we will fund the treatment" and I wanted to make sure that was happening everywhere.

2. Paul Burstow has previously written to Patricia Hewitt and Ian Ayers, Chief Executive of Sutton and Merton PCT, on the availability of Herceptin to treat local women.