06/10/2023
This we celebrate the fact that breast cancer survivorship is the highest it’s ever been – what amazing progress! From preventative breast-checking initiatives, the immense amount of research going into it, to the widest range of treatment options to attack the tumour have all helped to ensure millions more people live longer, and better beyond diagnosis.
However, it’s still gutting when drugs available for hard-to-treat cancers are rejected for NHS use like the recent news regarding breast cancer treatment as it unmasks what really matters for large state health systems: it’s not so much about patient benefit (especially if you are facing incurable cancer, like many of our patients) but it boils down to how much is a year of a patient’s life worth. There’s even a complicated equation for it called a . Grim.
But moving towards a health system that provides personalised, targeted treatments to all (like Enhertu, that relies on testing to see if it is a good match for patients) will inevitably be a huge upfront investment to transition into as it does heavily depend on more staffing, more sample analysis to show compatibility and more expensive, smaller drug batch purchases from pharma.
Not envious of the public health cleverbods that are assigned to work out how to make it all work!
In the meantime, there is a growing gap between what’s available through our NHS, and those treatments that lay outside of it. Sometimes, like Enhertu, these treatments may be approved and available in other countries, but not here in the UK. And because of the differing availability to those options, more patients are approaching us to seek guidance on how to fundraise to gain access to these treatments.
What are your thoughts on how our we can make even more progress on living longer and better with cancer?
