Cancer Drugs Fund ‘the wrong choice’ for Wales
pharmafile | May 29, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | CDF, Cancer, NHS, Wales, Welsh
The Welsh health minister Lesley Griffiths has said that a Cancer Drugs Fund is ‘not the right course’ for Wales.
Speaking at the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group tenth anniversary conference, Griffiths said: “I feel strongly a Cancer Drugs Fund would not be in the best interests of people in Wales.”
Griffiths said the Welsh Government would continue to focus its spend on cancer treatment – which is £4.50 more per head of population than in England – on early diagnosis and consistent, evidence-based access to cancer drugs, rather than a separate fund.
She said that Wales already had mechanisms in place to ensure access to non-approved medicines is consistent for patients in certain circumstances.
These come from exceptional funding routes and allow patients to apply for a drug that has not been recommended by All Wales Medicines Strategy Group, the Welsh drug pricing watchdog.
Griffiths also said that: “there is no consensus among senior clinicians either in England or Wales a Cancer Drugs Fund works”, adding that many believe it operates ‘inconsistently’, and takes money away from other services and equally deserving diseases.
This view is shared by Laura Weir, head of policy and campaigns at the MS Society, who told Pharmafocus last year that cancer should not receive special funding as it takes resources away from other diseases.
Griffiths added that there was no evidence that the Cancer Drugs Fund improves the quality of life or survival rates.
“The available evidence does show survival is more closely linked to early diagnosis while surgery and radiotherapy are more likely to influence survival, and it is on these issues we should focus,” she said.
“We believe it would create unacceptable inequities in our health system, and undermine the essential work of the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group to deliver evidence-based advice on new treatments.
“For all these reasons, I think the question should be why would the Welsh government introduce a Cancer Drugs Fund, when everything is telling us the responsible way forward is the evidence based approach we are taking.”
England is currently the only country in the UK to have a Cancer Drugs Fund.
The coalition government set up the CDF in October 2010 to inject an extra £650 million for funding of new cancer drugs that have not been recommended by NICE, or are undergoing an appraisal.
Earlier this year Eric Low, chief executive of Myeloma UK, said the CDF should not be used across the UK, as it allowed pharma companies to ‘get away’ with drugs that were not cost effective.
But many cancer patient groups have welcomed the Fund, with the Rarer Cancers Forum chief among them.
It believes that the Fund does increase access and releases regular figures to show how many doctors had accessed the Fund on behalf of their patients.
But there is currently no evidence to show whether it is increasing cancer survival rates in England – this will only become apparent in the longer term.
Ben Adams
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