HERCEPTIN SHAKES UP THE BRITISH HEALTH BUREAUCRACY

The drug Herceptin was yesterday hailed as a potential cure for breast cancer that will revolutionise the way the disease is treated and save up to 1,500 lives a year in Britain and many tens of thousands across the world. As an editorial in the world's most authoritative medical journal spoke of the drug's "stunning" results in trials, the Prime Minister insisted that it had to be made available in Britain more quickly.

A health authority in the West Country has become the first in the NHS to say that it will make the drug available to all suitable women with early breast cancer, even before it is cleared by regulatory authorities. The cost for a year's treatment is 21,800 pounds per patient.

The publication of trial data on Herceptin in the New England Journal of Medicine was accompanied by an editorial by a top US specialist proclaiming the results as revolutionary. The most striking finding is that the peak in recurrence of the disease in the first two to three years after surgery has been eliminated in women taking Herceptin, said Dr Gabriel Hortobagyi in the editorial. "This observation suggests a dramatic and perhaps permanent perturbation of the natural history of the disease, maybe even a cure," he wrote. "Longer follow-up will determine whether this is correct." .....

Forced on to the back foot by growing clamour from patients and cancer charities, the Prime Minister yesterday conceded in the Commons that Herceptin had shown the need to speed up drug approvals. "At present, I think we all accept the procedures are too slow," Mr Blair said. "We are looking at how we can speed that process up in cases where it particularly matters to people who may be desperately ill and think there is a drug on the market that can help them."

Currently, the drug is licensed for use only in advanced breast cancer, though doctors can use their discretion to prescribe it in other exceptional cases.

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British woman sells her house to pay for Herceptin in India

A breast cancer sufferer is spending more than 25,000 pounds to be treated with Herceptin by a private clinic in India. Linda Vijeh, 50, of Ilminster, Somerset, is selling her 125,000 pound house to pay for the drug. She is believed to be the first British patient to travel abroad for Herceptin. Speaking from India yesterday, she said: "Herceptin is only licensed in the UK for use where cancer has spread to other parts of the body. Well it's a bit bloody late then. "It takes some leap of faith to fly to a Third World country to be treated by a doctor you've never met in a hospital you've never heard of. That is how desperate I was."

Ms Vijeh, a former chef to the British Ambassador to the UN in New York and a Tory member of South Somerset District Council, had cancer diagnosed after finding a lump in her right breast in August last year. She was tested and found to have HER-2 positive breast cancer, the form of the disease that can be treated by Herceptin. She had the tumour removed a year ago before beginning chemotherapy in March at Treliske Hospital, Cornwall. It was there that she met an Indian doctor who referred her to a consultant in India.

After flying out on September 27 she had a mastectomy and reconstruction surgery. She is receiving one course of Herceptin in India; it will be administered intravenously during two-hour sessions every two weeks. That course is costing her 1,000 pounds and she is also paying the doctors about 17,000 pounds for a year's worth of the drug to bring back to Britain. Once home, she plans to find a private clinic to administer it

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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