Time NHS sorted out its priorities
Sep 4 2008 By The Stirrer
BIRMINGHAM man Timothy Nolan made the national papers this week because he’s been denied a life-prolonging cancer drug – even though he caught the disease from a contaminated NHS blood transfusion.
The 68-year old father of four has had to raid his savings to pay the monthly bill of £2,700 for a radical new treatment called Nevaxar after being turned down by his local Primary Care Trust.
His story will come as no surprise to regular readers of this column.
Over the past few months we’ve highlighted the plight of cancer sufferers Michael Young, from Selly Oak, and Lorraine Knight, from Wednesbury, who’ve had to battle for medication freely dispensed elsewhere in the country.
Andrew Dillon, boss of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which sanctions new drugs, recently came clean and admitted that the postcode lottery is alive and well in the health service.
Which is more than can be said of its patients.
The truth is that we now have rationing of healthcare by the back door, even for those with the most severe conditions.
If we’re going to have rationing, let’s at least have it walking head held high through the front entrance where we can all see what it looks like.
No doubt there have always been limits to the availability of treatment – but with expensive pills and potions coming on stream all the time, we must finally admit, fairly and squarely, that we can’t treat everyone or everything without bankrupting the NHS.
This will mean making some tough and sometimes unpalatable decisions.
We should start from the principle that the health service is there to make us better when we are sick – it wasn’t set up to make all our dreams come true, like some white-coated Fairy Godmother with a wand in one hand and a stethoscope in the other.
In my view, that means we should halt fertility treatment on the NHS.
Childlessness is not an illness, and transferring the IVF bill to cancer care and other specialisms could save thousands of lives.
As the father of two beautiful young daughters, I know how lucky I am to be a parent.
But couples who are desperate for kids could still pay for treatment themselves – or else seek out a child desperate for love and affection in one of the city’s children’s homes.
I’d also rule out nose and boob jobs on the NHS and all but the most extreme cases of cosmetic surgery. No one ever died of being ugly.
It’s even a moot point whether Viagra should be prescribed since the only side effect of what’s coyly known as “erectile dysfunction” is a feeling of disappointment.
If this makes me sound harsh and uncaring, I don’t mean to be.
The reality is that hard choices about patient care are already being made daily on wards and in committee rooms, away from public view.
These debates should surely be aired in public so that our pick ‘n’ mix NHS can finally get back to basics and help those, like Timothy Nolan, in their time of greatest need.
