According to The Rarer Cancers Foundation (RCF) patients in Wales are four times less likely to receive the new treatments on offer than those in England. There is a special fund in England, set up in 2010, which provides £200m a year to help pay for new cancer drugs. However, this funding is due to end next year.
Currently in Wales, patients have to make individual requests for funding through their doctor if a new drug has not been approved by NICE, the health watchdog. A report into funding requests shows that there is a large variation among the approval rates of health boards.
The RCF is calling for this inequality to be fixed. The Welsh Government claim that a cancer drug fund is not well supported, it's aim is to provide cost-effective and evidence-based treatment fairly to everyone, no matter what illness they were suffering from.
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Source: BBC News
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