“Patients condemned to die”: the campaign to make 2nd stem cell transplant available to all
3 Aug. 2017Anthony Nolan's Trust urged the Government to ensure every patient could access the treatment they needed and on the 24 February 2017 NHS England reinstated funding to 2nd stem cell transplants.
- Stem cell transplants help cancer patients replace damaged blood cells
- Procedure costs the National Health Service between £50,000 and £120,000
- In 2016 the NHS banned second transplant if disease came back after first
- Anthony Nolan Trust charity said: "22 transplant patients relapse each year"
In a joint letter to the Department of Health, Anthony Nolan Trust and some of leading names in British medicine rallied against the new guidance by the NHS.
‘Without a second transplant, the small percentage of patients considered suitable for one will die of their underlying disease,’ said Professor David Marks, former president of the British Society of Bone Marrow Transplantation and one of 18,000 signatories, including dozens of specialists in blood disease, to a letter handed to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
The treatment, which offers the best chance of survival to these patients, was given routinely in the US and Europe, and Prof Marks, director of the Bristol Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, said: ‘I know of no other first-world country where people with a 30 per cent chance of a cure are denied a transplant.’
Before 2013, patients in the UK eligible for a second transplant received one, but in that year NHS England (NHSE) began evaluating whether repeat transplants should continue to be funded.
For the following three years, doctors had to submit individual funding requests. Some were turned down, and NHSE declared then that second transplants were ‘not currently affordable’.
Henny Braund, chief executive officer of British transplant charity the Anthony Nolan Trust, which co-ordinated the petition asked the public to write to their MPs, and said: ‘This is a step backwards for patients."
The cost of a transplant was lower than the cost of caring for a patient who was refused a transplant
A transplant costs between £50,000 and £120,000, but the cost of caring for one patient refused a transplant in those few years was £130,000 for the year they survived, and for another patient who survived three years it was £160,000.
‘Of those who do get a second transplant, one in three survive at least five years, and many are young people leading fulfilling lives and making a contribution to society. Denying those patients a chance of life amounts to a death sentence.’
Emily Wellfare's Story
One of those presenting the protest petition was acute myeloid leukaemia sufferer Emily Wellfare, who was told she would die if she did not get a second transplant.
She said: ‘My consultant at the Royal Marsden Hospital told me it would be the only thing that could save my life. 'He mentioned he would have to apply for funding, and it never occurred to me it could be refused.’
In February the 25-year-old from Eastbourne was given the shocking news that the application had been refused.
‘My doctors said the hospital was going to give me the transplant anyway. I am so grateful they fought so hard for me, but I want to know why the NHS thought my life wasn’t worth fighting for,’ added Emily.
She was in the second year of a law degree course when she started suffering from incessant coughs and colds in early 2012. In April that year she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia.
After chemotherapy, Emily spent a year in remission before discovering at her routine one-year check-up that her leukaemia had returned.
She was told she would need a transplant of stem cells – a procedure once called a bone-marrow transplant.
Cells, taken from a donor, grow in the bloodstream and make healthy blood cells to replace a patients’ own damaged ones.
Emily had her first transplant in February 2014, following three more rounds of chemotherapy.
After nearly two further years in remission, it was discovered at the end of last year that Emily’s cancer had returned again.
Since having her second transplant on March 14, Emily has been well but has to take steroids, antibacterial and anti-fungal drugs and immuno-suppressants.
Dr Jenny Byrne, honorary consultant haematologist at the city’s university hospital trust, said: ‘It was extremely disappointing and frustrating, given that we have plenty of patients in Nottingham who have had second transplants and are long-term survivors, fit and well and cured.’
