Barbara Clark, a nurse fighting breast cancer, today won her battle with her local health authority to be prescribed expensive life-saving drugs.

Ms Clark, 49, from Bridgwater, Somerset, was taking legal action in an attempt to get the expensive drug Herceptin.

The mother of two was considering using the Human Rights Act to force the NHS to give her the treatment. She put her case to officials and experts from the Somerset Coast Primary Care Trust (SCPT) on Friday and it ruled today that she can now receive the treatment.

Ms Clark had been promised an answer today and if she had been unsuccessful she had vowed to take the landmark case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.

Ms Clark was too ill on to comment on today’s decision due to the chemotherapy treatment she is currently receiving. But family friend Ed Boyle said: "Barbara is absolutely delighted that the authorities have seen sense and seen her argument.

"She now hopes that this treatment will be extended to other women in her position."

Ms Clark had been told a course of Herceptin would cost £40,000 privately and she had already raised more than half the money through fundraising and donations from wellwishers.

The drug has not been approved to fight the early stages of the disease, despite the fact it could reduce the risk of the cancer returning by 52 per cent.

The nurse, who has a terminally ill 11-year-old foster son, had intended to use the Human Rights Act to claim the NHS was denying her the right to life.

Somerset Coast Primary Care Trust confirmed it had decided to fund Ms Clark’s treatment because of her "exceptional circumstances".

A spokesman for SCPCT said: "The Primary Care Trust’s Exceptional Treatment Panel agreed to fund the drug after a meeting last Friday.

"Since first being notified of Mrs Clark’s request to have this drug funded by the NHS on Friday September 16, the PCT has acted as quickly as possible to convene the panel and come to a decision.

"Although Herceptin is unlicensed, the primary care trust accepts that Mrs Clark has personal exceptional circumstances which the PCT feel justify the funding of this drug.

"The PCT has made arrangements for Mrs Clark to receive full clinical support in this treatment."

Alan Carpenter, chief executive of SCPCT, said: "The Primary Care Trust has looked very carefully at Mrs Clark’s individual circumstances and believes that it is in her best interests to receive Herceptin at this stage of her treatment."

The Government promised this summer that it would do all it could to help women with early breast cancer to get access to a new drug.

Herceptin is not yet licensed for first-line use, but Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, said that she would make an early referral to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) so that it could react quickly.

In a similar case to Mrs Clark’s this year, Joanne Leese, 30, a pregnant woman from Cheshire, was advised to have a Caesarean section to enable chemotherapy to begin after her PCT refused to prescribe Herceptin, despite the wishes of her consultant.

Herceptin is a targeted so-called "rational" therapeutic drug, which strikes, seeks and destroys the cancer cells without damaging the healthy tissue around it.

Women that have HER2 positive cancers, where their cells secrete an inordinate amount of the protein HER2, are particularly suitable for Herceptin, which could be life-saving for this 20 to 25 per cent of breast cancer sufferers.

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