Kidney Cancer UK calls Cancer Drugs Fund delisting shameful.

The UK’s leading kidney cancer charity, Kidney Cancer UK has labelled the delisting of a vital kidney cancer drug which will affect over 250 patients every year as ‘shameful’.
Nick Turkentine, the CEO of the Kidney Cancer UK, said: “The repercussions of delisting life extending drugs to kidney cancer patients are very serious. Every year in the UK, over 10,000 people learn they have kidney cancer, of those 4,252 will lose their life to the disease. Now by pushing that figure closer to 5,000 deaths every year, we could be looking at a 50% survival rate from kidney cancer; that is unacceptable. Whilst one of the keys to surviving kidney cancer is early diagnosis, these life-extending drugs offer the opportunity within that period for the exploration of other routes of treatments such as new methods of surgery, joining trials of new, more effective drugs so whilst they may be listed as ‘life-extending’, sometimes they can be ‘life saving’. Patients given a three-month survival time can live past a year.
“We respect that the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) are in a difficult position but we, along with most of the medical profession, believe the whole appraisal process is fatally flawed and needs to be re-evaluated. There are no clear reasons why some drugs have been dropped from the list while other less effective treatments remain funded”.
Mr Turkentine concluded: “We should be forward thinking and not in a situation where doctors have to tell patients they are dying and there is a drug available to help them live longer but cannot be prescribed due to not being on the Cancer Drugs Fund list. That situation is shameful”.