Public patients are being denied access to life-saving cancer drugs that are now available to private patients, it has been revealed.
This situation “cannot stand”, leading consultant oncologist Prof John Crown said today, and is creating a major dilemma for doctors and patients.
Oncologists around the country recently received a letter from health insurer VHI, which said certain cancer drugs known to help people with breast cancer and melanoma would be available to their policyholders.
VHI patients will now have access to breast cancer drug Pertuzumab (Perjeta) and immunotherapies such as Tecentriq (Atezolizumab), Keytruda (Pembrolizumab) and Opdivo (Nivolumab).
The drugs have been approved at European level, but whether they are available to patients is determined on a country to country basis.
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In Ireland, private insurance companies, of which the leading one is VHI, wait to provide new drugs to patients until after the medications are available to public patients.
But now, VHI has made the drugs available to their private patients - which is “troubling” and unprecedented, according to Prof Crown, who works at St Vincent’s Hospital in South Dublin.
Dr Crown says the availability of these cancer drugs is certainly welcome but the manner in which it has been made available to private patients before public ones is unusual.
“This is a great departure from the usual process,” Prof Crown told RTE Radio 1’s This Week programme today.
“For me, and for all of us, it is very troubling, because it has never ever happened to me in 26 years in this country, where I could look at a public patient and say, there is something that is available to private patients, but it is not available to you.
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“I have never seen that. This is a first, and it is very troubling.”
Dr Crown says this unprecedented situation has now created a dilemma for oncologists around the country, and for their patients.
“It’s very strange, the order in which this has happened is odd and I don’t quite understand it,” he said. “But what I do know is that it has given us a real dilemma right now, I am very uncomfortable with this.”
Dr Crown said Health Minister Simon Harris has played an important role in making drugs accessible to Irish patients, and he called upon the minister to be aware of this current situation.
“This is a situation that cannot stand. We cannot have two-tiered access to cancer drugs in this country. We just cannot do that. Please,” he said.
