The National Health Service drugs rationing body has been forced to review its policy of banning life-prolonging cancer medicines that are available elsewhere in Europe.

At present it rejects drugs that cost more than about £30,000 for a year of good-quality life – a limit that has not changed in four years.

The review by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) emerged after 26 top cancer consultants wrote to The Sunday Times last week saying that the current system for assessing new drugs was not working.

This weekend Professor Karol Sikora, former head of the World Health Organisation cancer programme and one of the main signatories of the letter, welcomed the review, which is expected to report back later this autumn.

Private drug helps cancer man left to die

Cancer patient sent home to die by the NHS sees health improve after cashing in pension and paying privately for drugs

• Banned cancer drugs better than NHS ones

• Doctors back top-up drugs

BACKGROUND

• Ministers rethink ban on private drugs in NHS

• ‘We’ve paid into the system all our lives. Why has the NHS turned on us?’

• Doctors' anger at cruelty to patients

• Cancer patients ‘betrayed’ by NHS

• Voters call for end to ban on private drugs

Dying cancer victim was forced to pay

Linda O’Boyle was denied free treatment in her final months because she had gone private to try to prolong her life

• Cancer victim told to pay for his own drugs by NHS

• Doctors for Reform fight NHS order to halt cancer care

• Fighting cancer and the ‘unjust’ health service

Related Links

• Cost cannot be the only criterion for the NHS

• Swallow this and you’ll get a better NHS

However, he said it was unlikely to solve the problem of withholding expensive drugs from NHS patients and predicted that political realities will force Alan Johnson, the health secretary, to intervene.

Nice provoked anger three weeks ago by ruling that the kidney cancer drugs Sutent, Nexavar, Torisel and Avastin should not be prescribed on the NHS. It brushed off the criticisms in Sikora’s letter, saying any concession would be at the expense of other patients.

It did not mention that it had already embarked on a review, which it now says it commissioned between three and four years ago.

Johnson has already hinted that he is concerned about Nice’s policy on kidney cancer. In a phone-in programme on BBC Radio 5 Live in June, he said that drugs were “too slow going through the system”.

Writing in The Sunday Times today, Sikora says: “I suspect by Christmas the drugs will be approved. Otherwise this episode could lose too many votes.”

Meanwhile, a one-year-old baby girl, Emma Rosser, is to take legal action against the NHS for denying her father, Jack, a cancer drug which could prolong his life. Lawyers are preparing to take a High Court action on behalf of the infant because they believe that an NHS trust is depriving her of a family life.

Explore Health

• Expert Advice

• Health Features

• Mental Health

• Alternative Medicine

• Child Health

• Health Club