Call for more cancer care funding

Feb 20 2013

The Scottish Government is facing face fresh calls to provide funding to help ensure more cancer patients get the latest medicines.

Tory health spokesman Jackson Carlaw, who will raise the issue in a Holyrood debate, said it was "not good enough" that patients north of the border were missing out

Last month Health Secretary Alex Neil announced a new £21 million fund to improve access to treatment for people with rare medical conditions.

But the motion put forward by the Conservatives said that the current system could "potentially deny NHS patients in Scotland access to some life-enhancing and life-extending drugs that are available to NHS patients in England, particularly for the treatment of cancer".

The party is now demanding that the SNP administration "come forward with funding to afford access to new medicines in Scotland for cancer patients and others".

Mr Carlaw said: "By recognising this failure and acting on it, the Scottish Government would not only extend many people's lives, but also their quality of life as they enter their final months. It is not good enough that patients in Scotland are missing out on this vital benefit when those elsewhere in the UK receive it."

The Tory deputy leader added: "The SNP likes to say in a separate Scotland everything will be wonderful. But on this evidence, cancer patients in Scotland have good reason the question that."

In November last year Mr Neil said a review would be carried out to look at current systems for making new medicines available across the NHS in Scotland.

At the moment people can use the Individual Patient Treatment Requests (IPTR) system to try to get drugs not yet approved for general use by the Scottish Medicines Consortium. But MSPs have heard concerns that this is an "inequitable process" that favours young, middle-class and articulate applicants over more suiunder waytable vulnerable people who cannot speak up for themselves.

A review is also being carried out to examine if the existing IPTR arrangements can be improved. A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "There is a review underway to consider how new medicines are appraised and accessed in Scotland. This work will look at every aspect of the introduction of new medicines from national advice to local decision-making to establish whether any further improvements can be made, and will report in the spring."