Campaigners fighting for the right to receive the life-extending cancer drug Sunitinib made an emotional plea to Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) at its annual general meeting.
Kidney cancer patients from across Oxfordshire were present at the PCT's headquarters in Cowley yesterday and demanded to know why the PCT refused to prescribe the drug except in exceptional circumstances and called for an urgent policy review.
But the PCT refused to reconsider its position until the National Institute on Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) — which decides if drugs should be NHS-funded — publishes its final guidance in January.
Nice's draft guidance advises PCTs not to prescribe Sunitinib.
Justice for Kidney Cancer Patients chairman Clive Stone, 60, said: "I have paid taxes for 40 years and volunteered all my life — I just want something back."
Jonathan McWilliam, the PCT's director of public health, said unless Nice overturned its draft guidance, the PCT would not prescribe the drug.
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