A NURSE fighting breast cancer has won a legal battle with her health authority to be prescribed expensive life-saving drugs.

Barbara Clark said she was absolutely delighted after health officials said that due to her exceptional circumstances she could now receive a course of Herceptin, which would have cost £40,000 privately.

Ms Clark, 49, had vowed to take her case to the European Court of Human Rights if her application to the Somerset Coast Primary Care Trust had been unsuccesful.

The trust said that it had agreed to prescribe the drug — which has not yet been approved to fight the early stages of the disease — due to Ms Clark’s personal circumstances. She has a terminally ill 11-year-old foster son.

After the trust backed down yesterday Ms Clark, who has two children, said she hoped the treatment would now be extended to other women in her position. She is currently in remission from the cancer after undergoing intense chemotherapy but her consultant has warned that the disease is likely to return within three or four months.

“I’m absolutely over the moon, this couldn’t be better news,” Ms Clark, who lives in Bridgwater, Somerset, said.

“It can increase life expectancy by 52 per cent, which means I’ve got a better chance of spending more time with my children.

“There’s a lot of women with exceptional need, everyone has the same need to life.”

Cancer charities welcomed the news and said the drug could make a difference to the lives of thousands of women. Clara MacKay, director of policy and research at Breast Cancer Care said: ““There is very clear evidence that Herceptin has the potential to make a huge difference to as many as 10,000 women in the UK every year following a diagnosis of breast cancer for the first time.

“Yet despite Herceptin’s apparent benefits, most women continue to face an extremely long delay before the drug becomes widely available.”

Joanne Rule, chief executive of charity CancerBACUP, added: “Now that one PCT has made Herceptin available to women with early breast cancer, the Department of Health must urgently consider making it available to all women who can benefit. The time to act is now.”

The Department of Health said the decision to fund Ms Clark’s treatment would not pave the way for other women to claim the treatment.

The manufacturers of the drug, which has been prescribed to up to 40 women on the NHS after individual primary care trusts ruled they had “exceptional circumstances”, have not applied for a licence for the early use of the drug in this country.

A spokeswoman for the DoH said: “The Government cannot dictate when drug companies apply for licences.

“We must be sure that medicines are robustly tested and proved effective before they are made available to patients. The licensing process is important for patient safety. If and when it is licensed for early use, NHS bodies can prescribe Herceptin, but this must be a local decision.”

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