A MUM-of-three yesterday spoke of her despair that fellow cancer sufferers are being denied a drug she believes has extended her life.

Carer Wendy Martin, 54, said she felt frustrated on behalf of other bowel cancer sufferers who will be unable to get Avastin on the NHS after the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) ruled it was too expensive.

Avastin can help patients with advanced bowel cancer which has spread to other organs, usually the liver and lungs. It costs almost £21,000 per patient and an estimated 6,500 people per year could be eligible for the drug.

Mrs Martin, of Kingfisher Drive, Banbury, said: “I was lucky enough to get Avastin as part of a trial and it has been very effective. I think the drug played a huge part in my recovery.

“It frustrates me so much that someone sitting behind a desk has decided that patients can’t get the drug.

“For some people the drug will be so near yet so out of reach, which is unfair because it can make the difference between life and death.

“Nice is arguing that the drug only prolongs life by a matter of weeks but that only applies to those who are terminally ill and Nice needs to look at the bigger picture.”

Mrs Martin lives with her husband David, 46, a welder, and three children, twins Laura and Rachel, 16, and son Daniel, 19.

She was diagnosed with bowel cancer in November 2006 and had surgery to remove a tumour in the same month. She began the Avastin programme in January 2007 after the cancer spread into her lymph nodes and remained on the drug for a year.

At the same time she underwent six months of chemotherapy treatment.

Mrs Martin, a volunteer for the charity Beating Bowel Cancer, says she she is now clear of cancer, although she will still undergo six-monthly checks at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford.

A study by Roche showed patients typically lived 21.3 months compared with 19.9 months with chemotherapy alone.

Ian Beaumont, campaigns director at Bowel Cancer UK, said: “We are naturally disappointed that Nice has turned down Avastin for use on the NHS when there is so much evidence of the treatment’s efficacy and it is so widely available to patients across the rest of Europe.”

Kidney cancer patients in Oxfordshire fought a lengthy battle against Nice before the life-prolonging drug Sunitinib was prescribed on the NHS last year.

NHS Oxfordshire spokesman Nikki Malin said: “Avastin is not routinely available on the NHS in Oxfordshire and to date no funding requests for it have been received, either from cancer specialists or GPs.

“NHS Oxfordshire does not generally commission treatments against the advice of Nice.”