Cancer Drugs Fund labelled ineffective

According to research published in the Annals of Oncology, The Cancer Drugs Fund in England was a ‘huge waste of money’ and may have caused patients to suffer unnecessarily from the side effects of the drugs.

The fund ran from 2010 to 2016, costing £1.27 billion, and was intended to pay for cancer drugs the NHS was not funding. However, the researchers found only one in five of the treatments was of benefit.

The study looked at the 47 treatments that were being funded by January 2015, the point at which drugs started to be listed because the cost of the fund was spiralling out of control.

Data showed that nearly 100,000 patients received drugs under the scheme, which was run separately to the normal NHS process for assessing the effectiveness and affordability of new drugs, which is administered by NICE.

It maintained that there was some evidence of benefit with an average addition 3.2 months of survival.

However, findings of the research showed only only 18 per cent of the drugs met internationally recognised criteria for being deemed clinically beneficial. Thus the researchers speculated that a majority of patients may well have suffered because of side effects that the drugs can cause.

Prof Richard Sullivan, lead researcher, from King's College London, described it the fund as a ‘policy on the hoof’ because of the way it was announced by former PM David Cameron during the 2010 election campaign.

He explained: ”Populism doesn't work when you are dealing with complex areas of policy like this. When it was launched it was not monitored properly. It was politically and intellectually lazy."