Linda Vijeh, 50, of Ilminster, Somerset, is selling her £125,000 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 and she is also paying the doctors about £17,000 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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