Private cancer care top up banned

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/england/7147030.stm

Version 0 of 1.

A Teesside health authority is threatening to make a cancer sufferer pay for all her treatment if she tries to top it up privately.

Colette Mills, 58, from Hutton Rudby in North Yorkshire, is being treated with Taxol for breast cancer.

The mother-of-two believes her chances would be improved with Avastin, which is not available on the NHS.

She is willing to fund it herself, but South Tees NHS Trust says if she did she would have to pay for all her care.

'Immoral'

This would cost an estimated £15,000 a month.

Ms Mills said: "The policy is that I must be a NHS patient or a private patient.

"It's immoral that the drugs are out there and freely available to certain people, yet they say I cannot have it"

South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust said in a statement: "If a patient chooses to go private for a certain drug they elect to become a private patient for the course of their treatment for that condition.

"That is trust policy".