Health authorities in Scotland were yesterday ordered to stop delaying and start treating patients suffering sight loss with an approved drug.
Health authorities in Scotland were yesterday ordered to stop delaying and start treating patients suffering sight loss with an approved drug.
The controversy, highlighted by The Herald, has resulted in sufferers being denied treatment which could prevent continued deterioration from wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) using a drug approved for use by the Scottish Medicines Consortium last July.
The Royal National Institute of the Blind has championed the demand for treatment using the drug Macugen in Scotland.
Yesterday the SNP MSP Stewart Maxwell raised the issue in parliament with the Deputy Health Minister, Lewis Macdonald, at Holyrood, who said "early modelling" indicated there were an estimated 16,000 people with the condition in Scotland.
Mr Maxwell cited the case of a Helensburgh man who was told by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde: "We have concluded that NHS GG&C is unable to provide a safe, equitable service for Macugen' therapy at the present time."
The reply then spoke of a "timetable for submission of the business plan" remaining on schedule. Mr Maxwell asked: "Given that treatment for the disease is time critical to avoid blindness and given that the SMC approved the new drugs as far back July 2006, will the minister explain why Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board is developing a business plan only now, seven months after the drug's approval?"
The West of Scotland MSP also said he believed the cost of aiding people who have gone blind would be "much higher than the cost of treating the condition and saving those people's sight".
The minister replied: "Treatment centres in Glasgow have the capacity to deliver the treatment to which the member refers."
Mr Macdonald added: "That treatment should be made available. It is a clear directive that health boards should respond to the SMC's judgment."
John Legg, director of The Royal National Institute of the Blind in Scotland, said: "The minister's intervention is welcome. It is not acceptable that people should lose their sight because health boards are failing to deliver treatment almost six months after this drug has been approved for NHS use in Scotland."
In spite of the minister's claim that existing treatment centres had the capacity to deliver the treatment, a spokeswoman for the board insisted last night: "We recognise that this drug could benefit many patients. However, to deliver this drug treatment requires the use of sterile conditions. A business case has been developed for the provision of a full and equitable service to meet the needs of patients with AMD."
The Health Minister's comments that facilities already exist in Glasgow squares with anecdotal evidence received from the RNIB that patients from outside the Great Glasgow area had already received the treatment.
The row over AMD came to prominence in Scotland because of the case of Maria Gurney, a former nurse from Greenock, who was being denied the treatment against the wishes of her consultant.
The RNIB this week said they had found a common approach across major Scottish health boards to continue denying use of the drug on grounds of the lack of facilities or trained staff.
