The NHS England has stopped the funding of sixteen cancer drugs intended for more than twenty cancer treatments, citing the benefits do not justify the cost of the drugs.
In a report released by NHS Fund on Friday, September 4, the drugs that have been removed from the Cancer Fund Drug list include:
- Albumin-bound Paclitaxel for advanced pancreatic cancer
- Bendamustine for chronic lymphocytic leukemia and relapsed mantle-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
- Bevacizumab for metastatic or recurrent cervical cancer, as well as advanced breast cancer and colorectal cancer
- Bosutinib for refractory chronic or accelerated phase chronic myeloid leukemia
- Brentuxinab for refractory systemic anaplastic lymphoma and relapsed or refractory CD30+ Hodgkin's lymphoma
- Cetuximab for metastatic colorectal cancer
- Dasatinib for Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia
- Everolimus for metastatic renal cell carcinoma
Some of these drugs are called life extending since they are administered as third or fourth line of treatment or provided when the disease has already advanced and metastasized.
The decision of NHS England is described as a "hammer blow" by the Rarer Cancers Foundation, a charity organization, as it's going to affect over 5,000 patients, including the newly diagnosed. Its chief executive Andrew Wilson further called the move as a "breach of faith" since they proceeded with the cuts before presenting the supposed reforms to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), an independent UK organization of which one of its jobs is to determine whether the drugs benefit patients.
This isn't the first time NHS has cut certain drugs from the Cancer Drugs Fund, which was created by PM David Cameron. At the beginning of the year, the list was almost cut in half after the agency rejected more than 35 of the drugs for funding. After the new report, only 23 out of the original 84 funded therapies remain.
These budget cuts were made in light of the agency's overspending for cancer treatment.