Men denied the medication against prostate cancer that extend for life in NHS in England

A beneficial cancer organization has said that it is “angry and frustrated” that ministers and health officials have not approved the provision of a medication for prostate cancer that extended life through the NHS in England.

The medicine, Abiraterone, has been available in Scotland and Wales for two years for high -risk patients whose cancer has not yet been extended, but not in England and Northern Ireland.

In a letter to prostate cancer, seen by the BBC, Health Minister Karin Smyth said that NHS England’s decision, after a long review, was “based on general affordableness” and that “it would not be appropriate to intervene.”

The Government said that urgent advice had been requested on the issue.

The beneficial organization said it was an “urgent and urgent situation in England” with “a bureaucratic block that denies men this treatment.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We understand the frustration and discomfort of some patients who cannot access this potentially Salvador treatment. Ministers have requested urgent advice on the subject.”

Although it is not a cure, abiraterone can help prevent prostate cancer from spreading to other parts of the body.

In England and Northern Ireland, the medicine is only approved for men with very advanced prostate cancer that has already spread.

In Wales and Scotland, people with the disease that have not yet spread can also obtain it.

The research has shown that for these patients in anterior stage, the survival rate after six years is improved and that the medicine reduced the rate of cancer progression in half.

The charity says that many lives could be extended by the medicine, given the findings of a trial called Stampede, Posted in 2022.

He found improved probabilities of survival among the men who gave the medication together with the usual attention, and concluded that abyrtone should be considered a new standard treatment.

According to NHS England figures, every year, around 8,400 patients have high -risk prostate cancer that has not yet spread.

Using stampede cases, 672 of these men could die prematurely without access to Abiraterone.

In October 2023, BBC News spoke with Giles Turner, a retired banker who lives in Sussex. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier that year, but they told him that abyaterone could not be obtained in the NHS in England.

He chose to pay the treatment with the medication at £ 250 per month. Then he told us that he felt “very lucky” of being able to pay it, but outraged by others who could not.

At that time, NHS England said he was reviewing the use of the drug for a broader range of men.

However, in December 2024 he told Prostate Cancer UK that “it has not been possible to identify the necessary recurrent space in income budgets.”

Because abiraterone is a generic medicine that has “out of patent” and has a license for only a group of prostate cancer patients, there is a complicated process to approve it for broader use.

Every year, NHS England can make “discretionary” investment decisions with a specialized advisory group, but has chosen not for this medicine.

Smyth’s letter earlier this month said the process had to analyze “the general impact of the budget to introduce a new treatment based on patient volumes”, and ministers would not intervene.

Turner said he was “stunned” that almost a year and a half after the BBC report, NHS England had not reached the NHS Scotland and NHS Wales.

Until now he has spent £ 20,000 on his treatment, and said he felt that it was wrong that, although the new treatments of patented medicines could be financed, abiraterone, which cost the NHS £ 77 per package per month, it could not be.