After The Sunday Times restaurant critic AA Gill was refused £100,000 cancer treatment by NHS, we meet other sufferers denied immunotherapy
Gill's treatment was almost four times the cost of chemotherapy, a sum the NHS was unprepared to pay
IMAGINE a world where it is possible to beat all cancers.
Scientists hope this could be a reality one day as they work hard to find a cure for the Big C.
There is hope that immunotherapy – a type of treatment that activates the immune system to fight rogue cells – could beat cancers deemed “incurable”.
Only recently, there have been reports of people going into remission after having the treatment for various types of cancer, including lung, cervical and skin.
Yet not all patients in the UK have access to the drugs. Journalist AA Gill, 62, died on Saturday after lung cancer had spread to his neck and pancreas.
He was denied immunotherapy and before his death, he claimed it could have helped him live longer, branding it the weapon of choice for “every oncologist in the First World”.
Gill’s treatment would have cost £100,000 – almost four times the cost of chemotherapy. It was a sum the NHS was unprepared to pay.
Angus Dalgleish, Foundation Professor of Oncology at St George’s, University of London and Principal of the Cancer Vaccine Institute, said: “The NHS now spends more than £1billion annually on just four immunotherapy drugs.
“With the expected increase in demand, it will be unsustainable at these prices so now is the time to address how future treatments are going to be paid for.”
A spokesperson for NICE, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, said: “All our appraisals have to be objective and look beyond company claims to the hard evidence. Each appraisal is on a case-by-case basis and we will check how well a new treatment works and how much it costs, compared to what is already available on the NHS.
“Where the evidence is clear and a drug has been fairly priced, we can recommended it for routine use.”
Here, we speak to two families who were denied immunotherapy on the NHS.
'He didn't fit the criteria'
DAREL Bryan was just 33 when he died from a brain tumour. The property manager, from Tower Hamlets, East London, was refused immunotherapy on the NHS because he didn’t fit the criteria.
His partner of 12 years, Natalie Overs, 33, says: "Darel was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of brain tumour, in December 2014. He had a fit at work and tests showed a mass growing in his brain.
"A biopsy confirmed it was glioblastoma and he started chemotherapy straight away.
"Although we were advised not to, I read all about his type of cancer online. I knew his prognosis wasn’t great – and learned all about immunotherapy.
"There was talk about it shortly after Darel was diagnosed but doctors told us he didn’t fit the criteria because he’d already had chemotherapy to try to shrink his tumour.
It was an eye-watering amount of money but we considered remortgaging
"I didn’t quite realise then how limited his treatment options were. He tried to get on to many trials but he just didn’t fit the criteria – they are very strict.
"When we went to see an oncologist we spoke about him accessing immunotherapy privately. But with the number of injections and other drugs he would need, it would have worked out at about £250,000.
"It was an eye-watering amount of money – but we considered remortgaging to see if we could at least make up some of it.
"Sadly, before we could work out how we’d raise the cash, Darel’s health took a turn for the worse and he passed away.
"He was always so fit, healthy and active – I still don’t know why he developed the brain tumour and I’ve struggled to come to terms with that."
'I've raised £170k for the treatment'
FORMER student development director Mo Haque, 33, was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in December 2014. He was told he could not access immunotherapy on the NHS. Mo, of Camden, North London, has since raised £170,000 to cover the cost of his treatment. He says:
"I was diagnosed with bowel cancer when I was just 31. It came as a massive shock, but doctors were hopeful that chemotherapy to shrink the tumour in my colon and then surgery would rid me of it.
"But when I went for a routine scan in December 2015, I was told the tumour was back and it had spread to my lymph nodes. I had more chemotherapy and some radiotherapy but my tumours kept growing. I have four in total – one in my neck and three in my abdomen. I needed more chemo and some radiotherapy, but I knew there was no hope of a cure.
"Doctors applied for me to have immunotherapy on the NHS but I was denied it. All the research I read said many people with the same type of bowel cancer as me responded well to immunotherapy, so I couldn’t believe I couldn’t have it.
"A friend suggested I start fundraising for the drugs, so I did. It is costing me around £6,000 every two weeks, but it has been worth it – my tumours have shrunk by 50 per cent since my treatment began in August.
"I appreciate more research needs to be done but, where studies show it benefits a majority of patients, it should be available to all."
What is immunotherapy?
CANCER is undetected by the immune system, allowing it to spread.
Immunotherapy drugs wake the immune system, help the body realise the cancer is there and encourage it to attack the cancer.
The drugs are injected into the patient’s bloodstream via a drip or a plastic tube into a large chest vein. Patients tend to receive the treatment for an hour every fortnight.