In the circumstances we feel we have done all we can and that an appeal against the current FAD is not a positive option for us.
We feel our focus must now shift to ensuring that applications to the Cancer Drugs Fund are successful on every occasion a clinician selects that option to access dasatinib for patients in need.
We continue to urge BMS to submit a Patient Access Scheme to the Department of Health.
Please read full statement on the home page.
Sandy
For those of us on Dasatinib as part of the Spirit 2 trial, the wording of the FAD appears to say that we should be permitted to continue on the drug after the trial ends. That is 5 years from now, and there is a further review in 2014, but even with these in the background, the uncertainty about the future is undesirable.
As the drug is free on the trial, someone will have to be prepared to pay for it at the end of the trial, and so we will have to go through a process in 2017 whereby about 250 UK patients hit the NHS for £8.75M of annual drug cost at an average £35k per patient per year. One could envisage the NHS preparing itself to be resistant to that and trying to persuade some of us to go a different way.
If the drug works for me with tolerable side-effects, there's no way as a patient that I would want to change to something else.
A useful contribution that CMLSg could provide would be lobbying for clarification that the wording will ensure future availability of Dasatinib at the end of the Spirit-2 trial for any patient who wants to keep using it.
Rod
Hi Rod,
Thanks for your input. I can assure you that we have asked, and will continue to ask, for clarification on the future position of Spirit 2 trial patients, as well as other issues. To date, we have not had any answers.
I can assure everyone that we continue to work very hard on this as well as other issues, although it might not be apparent, and will again ask BMS to clarify the situation as far as it is possible, for those on the Spirit 2 trial, as well as for those future patients who will need dasatinib in 2nd line.
As soon as we have answers we will of course share them here.
Best wishes,
Sandy
