Tag Archives: cancer
The decision not to recommend Halaven deprived thousands of women of hope
Lift ban on cancer drug, says woman who it has helped
Health bosses were today urged to reverse their ban on a life-extending breast cancer drug.
Trials show that Halaven can give some patients an extra few months of life. But today the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence banned the breakthrough treatment, which works by blocking tumour growth.
They are not recommending it for patients with advanced breast cancer because they say it is not cost-effective at an average £9,390 for a full course – equivalent to five treatment cycles.
Now one of the first British patients to benefit from the drug, an experimental treatment derived from a chemical found in sea sponges, has called on Nice to think again.
Touchingly they became carers for one another
They were Shropshire childhood sweethearts
Tuesday 19th July 2011, 10:05AM BST.
For more than 70 years, childhood sweethearts Allen Clifford and his wife Rita were inseparable. Not even Allen being captured as a prisoner of war could keep them apart.
“Rita and I met as 16-year-olds at a church youth club before World War Two,” says Allen, now aged 88, from Telford.
“I was shot down over Germany and interned as a PoW. I subsequently escaped and Rita and I got engaged in 1945 and married in 1946.”
The couple raised a son and lived and worked all over England; Rita as a civil servant and primary teacher, Allen as a lecturer and later an education inspector.
The Football League pitches in for hospice care
The Football League has teamed up with national charity Help the Hospices for the 2011/12 season.
The Football League’s official charity partnership with Help the Hospices will give millions of Football League fans across England and Wales the chance to make a difference for people with life-limiting illnesses in their local community and their families.
