After his father died of bone cancer last year, Nick Leslau decided it was time to check out his own health. The 46-year-old multi-millionaire paid about £2,700 for a full body scan at a private clinic.

“I have three children and I want to be around for a while,” Leslau explained last week at his home in Hampstead, north London.

Fortunately, doctors at the Preventicum clinic in west London found no cancer; but Leslau will continue to have private scans so that if a tumour does develop it will be caught early. Were the worst to occur, he could afford the best treatment available.

Joanne Lees, a pay-roll clerk, relies on the National Health Service. But, as she has discovered, deep pockets can be required here, too — particularly if the worst does occur.

When she received a telephone call at work in August last year asking her to go to hospital immediately, she expected to receive bad news. But she did not expect it to be quite so awful.

Lees, 31, learnt that she had a fast-growing tumour in her right breast. She had a mastectomy a couple of weeks later; but there were two complicating factors.

First, she was six months’ pregnant. Her baby son Nathan had to be delivered by caesarean section 10 weeks early so that she could undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Additionally, it was her second bout of cancer. She had lost her left breast when she was 26.

Lees had a quiet Christmas with Nathan and her husband Sean, but thought that she might not be around to enjoy another one. She was told that the likelihood of the disease returning was 81%.

Her breast cancer nurse offered a glimmer of hope, however. Early results from clinical trials showed that a new drug, Herceptin, could reduce the chances of cancer coming back in some patients.

A test showed that Lees was positive for the HER-2 gene, which put her among the 25% of breast cancer patients who could benefit from this new wonder drug.

Her oncologist at the University hospital of North Staffordshire was prepared to prescribe the medicine. There was just one problem: the NHS would not pay for it.

Lees and her husband had no idea where they would find the £40,000 asked for a two-year course of treatment.

“We are just a normal family,” she said. “Very few people would be able to pay for this medicine from savings.”

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