The wife of a leading figure in the campaign to end the ban on NHS patients paying privately for life-prolonging cancer drugs died from the disease just two weeks before Alan Johnson, the health secretary, announced a U-turn on the policy.

Earlier this year Gordon Matthews, an NHS trauma consultant, persuaded doctors’ leaders to back the campaign to end the practice by which hospitals withdrew state care from patients who bought drugs.

He had personal experience. His wife Sue, 57, was suffering from cancer and said she feared a government-commissioned inquiry into so-called co-payment would be too late for her. “I will be dead by then,” she told The Sunday Times.

Tragically, her prediction was correct. The mother of two from Buckinghamshire died in the arms of her son Robbie at the end of last month, just a fortnight before the ban was lifted.

Last week Johnson ended the ban on co-payments, also known as top-ups. The reversal followed a year-long campaign by The Sunday Times.

Earlier this year Johnson had argued that co-payment would create a two-tier NHS, but after a 4½month inquiry by Professor Mike Richards, the cancer czar, the health secretary changed his mind.

The inquiry was prompted by the revelation in The Sunday Times that another bowel cancer patient, Linda O’Boyle, 64, from Billericay, Essex, had died after her NHS care was withdrawn because she paid privately for the drug Erbitux.

Last week Richards recognised the contribution made by her family and by this newspaper to the change in policy. He said: “I think it is safe to say that the O’Boyles and The Sunday Times played their part in this.”

Sue Matthews’s case was at the centre of an emotional argument made by her husband in June to the influential British Medical Association (BMA) consultants’ conference for the ban on top-ups to be removed. He told colleagues a change in policy could buy his wife, who had bowel cancer, extra months of life. The BMA responded by backing the lifting of the ban.

Her consultant at the Leicester Royal Infirmary had said her life could be prolonged if she paid privately for Avastin or Erbitux, two bowel cancer drugs the NHS does not fund.

The couple could have paid privately for the medicines, which would have cost about £20,000 a year, but because Matthews was suffering several complications, the couple feared they could face bills of up to £100,000 to cover the costs of all her routine NHS treatment.

Last week Gordon Matthews said: “The introduction of co-payment has just come at the wrong time. It is too late for some patients, including Sue. It was blatantly unfair and unethical to withdraw health-care from those who needed it.”

Matthews is comforted, however, that other patients will benefit from the policy change.

He added: “If Sue had had these drugs they may have given her a few more months. I don’t feel bitter about the fact that Sue didn’t have them, well a little bit perhaps, but such is life, and I am pleased they made the right decision eventually.”

The public outrage over access to drugs has also prompted the government to ask its medical rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, to review its formulae for calculating whether treatments should be funded on the NHS.

Richards has strongly indicated that one of the institute’s most controversial decisions, to refuse life-prolonging kidney cancer drugs, will be overturned in January.

“As part of the review, I talked to a lot of my colleagues who are experts in kidney cancer and there was a strong feeling they would like these drugs to be available within the NHS. They believe they are of benefit and that they should be used. We believe we now have a new opportunity for those drugs to become available,” he said.

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