A BREAST cancer charity has stressed the need for fairer access to life-saving drugs in Scotland while it emerged the money available for innovative new medicines is to double to £80 million this year.

The Breast Cancer Campaign and Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity is anxious that while the fund for end-of-life conditions is boosted - that those that need it benefit equally.

There is continued concern that drugs rejected by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) for general use in the NHS remain unavailable to patients, as health authorities are said to be keen to stick to their judgement.

And there is also a worry that there is little encouragement for pharmaceutical companies to cut their prices.

The New Medicines Fund was inspired by the plight of patients such as Gourock pensioner Joyce Juszczak who in December, 2011, only received treatment for a life-threatening blood condition after she suffered a potentially fatal blood clot.

After the Herald highlighted her plight, the 67-year-old, appeared at the Scottish Parliament with her daughters to press for access to the drug for paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH). She had earlier failed in a series of appeals over six months, including a review of her case after an intervention from then Health Secretary, now First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

Her first refusal came just weeks after another patient William Devine died shortly after receiving his rejection letter.

Despite remaining on the 'not recommended'' list for the NHS as far as the value for money assessor SMC was concerned it is available through the Fund.

Health charities hoped that in theory, at least, the drug fund would ease the path for approvals of the drug.

Currently the old IPTR (Individual Patient Treatment Request) system which Ms Juszczak had to use remains in place until the new supposedly streamlined PACS (Peer Approved Clinical System) method comes into force. There is no details yet about when that will happen.

But the Scottish Government has said it hoped to reduce reliance on individual requests for drugs through its changes in the approach to approving medicines.

James Jopling, Scotland director for the Breast Cancer Campaign and Breakthrough Breast Cancer, welcomed the extra money and stressed funding must be accessed "fully and fairly right across Scotland".

"The difficulty of the situation is that really high priced medicines that we would like to see available to breast cancer patients are being rejected purely on cost. As much of the frustration of that is directed at the pharmaceutical companies as it is to the decision makers, because the prices of drugs being presented are way above the levels of drugs that have been previously been approved.

"If you keep pouring money into this pot, eventually it will just get used up because pharmaceutical companies will be under no incentive to reduce the prices they are charging, because politicians are conscious of the fact they need to find a way round providing cancer medicines.

He added: "We need to see fairer access to those high cost but effective medicines rejected by the SMC because they aren't currently considered 'value for money'. Cost simply shouldn't be an issue where we know there are treatments that could extend life. But in a public health system we accept that it always will be.

Last year two of what he described as highly effective medicines for HER2 secondary breast cancer - Kadcyla and Perjeta - were turned down by the SMC on the grounds of cost. Perjeta (pertuzumab) is priced at £105,000 and Kadcyla (TDM-1) is at £80,0000 per course of treatment.

Mr Jopling said: "I would love those drugs to be made available for patients in Scotland. I understand that no matter how frustration it is, that at that price it was unsustainable for them to be approved because it would have opened the door for every other drug potentially to come in at that level."

Gregor McNie, senior public affairs manager for Cancer Research UK in Scotland, also stressed: "It's crucial that this fund represents a sustainable way to pay for medicines, and that all health boards and doctors know about it and can use it to benefit their patients."

Yvonne Hughes, public affairs officer for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, said she was "delighted" with the increase in cash for the fund which "pays for a small group of people with cystic fibrosis to receive a life changing drug".

Health secretary Shona Robison said the health service "should be doing all we can" to improve treatment for these patients, along with those suffering from rare medical conditions.

"The fund will work in tandem with the changes introduced to the SMC process, which has given patients greater say over decisions and resulted in more drugs approved for widespread use on the NHS," she said.