Free Health Care - ask Mrs. Mills

In late January the Sunday Times ran the story about Colette Mills, a woman with breast cancer.She had undertaken a challenge to the NHS about her treatment. Clinicians seem to have been agreed that the drug Avastin would have significantly increased her defence against the cancer spreading to other parts of her body. Taken with another drug, Taxol, it would have also have controlled the breast cancer itself.

The trouble is that Avastin is not available on the NHS.

She offered to pay for the drug, which would have cost her £4,000 a month, but the health authorities refused, on the grounds that allowing her to pay for some of her treatment would violate the fundamental principle of the NHS that treatment must be free at the point of of need.

She was in difficulty. She could not afford private treatment including Avastin, as that would cost £10,000 each month, a further £6,000.

The health authorities were adamant, and after a few months of argument it became too late for the drug to have any use for her.She is now doomed.

We are familiar with the NHS allowing people to die because the Govt. body, N.I.C.E, decided a drug should not be supplied, or because a regional health authority decided that it could not afford a drug authorised by N.I.C.E. The latter is, of course, part of the post-code lottery and must surely violate some other NHS principle.

Everyone knows that we contribute to our treatment in all sorts of ways, not least in prescription charges, charges for our keep in long stay, or equipment. The list could be extended.

The protest that the fundamental principle could not be broken was a refuge for the NHS authorities. The principle is broken in hundreds of ways daily, and they must surely have known this.

Mrs. Mills will have her life cut short because the NHS is underfunded, and because it pays lip service to a principle which it breaks very frequently.