PreventDisease.com - Charity Says European Govt. Fails Cancer Patients



		Charity Says European Govt. Fails Cancer Patients LONDON (Reuters Health) - European governments are failing cancer patients because prolonged national reimbursement procedures mean new anti-cancer treatments become available too late for many, the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC) warned on Sunday. The charity said that with only half of all cancer patients surviving five years there was a desperate need for access to new anti-cancer drugs. ``But many people with cancer in EU countries are facing unacceptable delays in gaining access to new treatments as a direct result of lengthy bureaucratic national reimbursement procedures which affect patients' pockets direct in some countries and Government health agencies such as the NHS in others,'' the group said. Professor Gordon McVie, CRC director general, said: ``These delays inevitably mean that access to new breakthrough treatments for cancer arrives too late for some patients. ``National assessments and reimbursement negotiations for new cancer treatments can take years, whereas the life expectancy of some of those cancer patients who could benefit from them can be a matter of months.'' McVie explained in a news release that the problems that European cancer patients experience in gaining access to new treatments stem from the requirement to put new drugs that have been approved as safe and effective by national regulatory agencies or the EU-wide EMEA system through a separate national pricing and reimbursement procedure before they can be prescribed. ``Each EU member state has its own system for agreeing pricing and reimbursement for new treatments, which in some countries involves submissions to more than one government department, and may also include a review by a health technical assessment agency (HTA) such as NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) in the UK. ``Essentially, these procedures involve an appraisal of the data supporting the safety and clinical benefits of a new treatment, much of which has already been reviewed by the EMEA, in the context of what is currently available and the potential cost implications to subsidised health services of prescribing the new treatment. ``A decision on the national price and level of reimbursement for a new treatment is then made on the basis of the findings of the review.'' He added that although the process may be essentially the same in all countries, there were vast differences in the time it takes to complete. For example, the time from EMEA approval of docetaxel (Taxotere), an important treatment for breast cancer, to its eventual approval by the UK authorities for reimbursement was an incredible four and a half years. Across the EU, it had been estimated that on average there is a four-year difference between the fastest national approval process and the slowest, with patients living in Greece, Portugal, Belgium and France enduring far longer delays for new anti-cancer treatments than those in Sweden, Germany or the UK. The average time delay from approval to prescription in Sweden, which has the fastest national approval process, was less than three months. ``We have a situation in Europe where cancer patients are being discriminated against based on where they live. Denying patients access to new cancer treatments as a consequence of bureaucracy and complacency is completely unacceptable,'' McVie said. ``How can national governments taking years to approve much needed new treatments for prescription justify the delay when other countries in the EU can complete the process in a matter of months? ``I believe that cancer patient organisations across Europe can make a real contribution to accelerating these national review procedures, bringing public pressure to bear on key decision makers and actively participating in the consultation process,'' concludes McVie. ``I hope that bringing this issue forward for discussion amongst the cancer patient support and advocacy groups gathered in Brighton will provide the starting point for a drive to establish a powerful patient presence at the heart of national pricing and reimbursement systems.'' McVie is due to raise his concerns at the 3rd Global Conference for Cancer Organisations, which is being held Brighton this week. The Campaign for Effective and Rational Treatment (CERT), which campaigns for wider use in the UK of modern cancer drugs, welcomed the fact that CRC had highlighted the delays in bringing new cancer drugs to patients. CERT Director David Campbell-Morrison said: ``Professor Gordon McVie's findings that Britain lags behind most countries in Europe in making use of new cancer drugs echoes what CERT showed as long ago as May 1999 in our first report on the shortfall on oncology drugs in the UK. ``We found that one of the reasons that the standard of UK cancer treatment was falling behind the US and many European countries was the low level of NHS spending on cancer drugs and that there was a gap of at least 170 million ($240 million US) between needs and provision. ``That gap had grown to 207 million by the time of our second report in July 2000 in addition to 75 million for the anti-cancer drugs recommended by NICE, which the Government expected Health Authorities to be funding. Although the Government has made important progress in prioritising cancer, we are still playing 'catch-up.' The lengthy assessment periods and bureaucratic reimbursement procedures referred to by Professor McVie can only add to the problems caused by years of under-investment in cancer treatment.'' Reference Source 89 For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".