Colin Ross, 55, of Horsham, West Sussex, found that he had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells, in May 2004, and has been told that unless he is given the drug Revlimid he will not survive beyond the autumn.

Mr Ross, a former engineer in the oil and gas industry, has suffered years of pain and disability because of the disease, which has been slowly eating away at his vertebrae and other bones, making them brittle.

Despite the exhortations of doctors treating him at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, Britain’s leading cancer hospital, Mr Ross’s local NHS primary care trust in West Sussex has refused repeatedly to fund the treatment, even though patients in East Sussex and elsewhere have access to the drug on the NHS. “I’ve broken bones several times, feeling very weak and tired all the time. It’s got to the point where my bone structure can’t support my own weight, it takes ten minutes just to get out of bed and I can’t stand unsupported in front of the mirror to clean my teeth,” he told The Times yesterday. “I was told from the start that it was incurable, that treatment could only hold it at bay, but it now seems that Revlimid is my last resort.”

Although the drug is readily available to patients across Europe and in the United States, it has not yet been granted approval for use throughout the NHS in England and so is being provided only by some NHS trusts in “exceptional circumstances”.

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