Seeing Sense Over Eyecare
Posted on: Saturday, 5 July 2008, 00:00 CDT
THOSE people faced with the threat of losing their sight will rejoice that a treatment is now available on the NHS in Yorkshire which might prevent this terrible prospect.
However, this hugely welcome news should not be allowed to erase
the memory of the unnecessarily tortuous battle that campaigners have had to fight to reach this major landmark.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence took months to reach a decision over Lucentis, deliberations that culminated in inhumane advice to doctors that they should prescribe the drug to a minority of patients and only when they had already lost the sight in one eye.
Widespread disgust prompted a re-think and an eventual agreement that every sufferer should benefit, but only after another long delay. In fact, NICE has yet to formally publish its final guidance, but mercifully that delay will not needlessly cost anyone else in Yorkshire their sight.
The battle over Lucentis has become a case study highlighting everything that is wrong with the way decisions are taken over which treatments are made available, and to which patients, through the NHS. There should be no repeat.
Ministers have tacitly acknowledged the problems through plans to speed up the NICE process and also in the proposed NHS constitution which will promise every patient access to drugs that have been formally approved no matter where they live.
Both of these measures should be an improvement on the current situation, but more fundamental changes are required if public confidence is to be restored. In particular, NICE must be far more transparent about the way it reaches its conclusions and the weight it attaches to different pieces of evidence about drugs, their cost and their effectiveness.
Realistically, the NHS will never be able to afford to fund every treatment for every patient. But those patients whose health, and sometimes lives, depend on the judgments reached by NICE, deserve to have their cases dealt with in an open, fair and prompt manner.
(c) 2008 Yorkshire Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Yorkshire Post
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