Woman whose NHS cancer trial was halted seeks to buy drug privately

A psychologist denied access to a potentially life-saving cancer drug trial because NHS services were suspended due to Covid-19 is trying to raise £240,000 to buy the medicine privately.

Wendy Peake said it was “shocking, absolutely shocking” that she and her husband, Andrew, were having to use their savings, draw down pension money and remortgage their house to raise the money for treatment that she was due to get on the NHS until the pandemic struck.

Their daughters, India and Bella, have set up a fundraising appeal on social media to bridge the £100,000 gap between their own resources and the cost of the treatment.

Peake, an educational and child psychologist in Cheshire, was diagnosed last November with liver cancer. She was due to have her first sessions of chemotherapy on 27 March, but was told on 23 March – the first day of the lockdown – that the treatment was no longer going ahead.

“On the day they told me the treatment wasn’t going ahead, and the manner in which I was told, that was the day I lost trust and respect for the hospital and the day my life was catapulted into unbearable turmoil. [The NHS displayed] a cavalier attitude,” she told the Guardian.

“Watching family members struggle with the devastating decisions made on my behalf by the hospital was heart-wrenching. I’ve had to go with my tumours going untreated for eight months.”

Peake, 58, was due to undergo a treatment called chemosaturation therapy, in which her liver is isolated and injected with high doses of a drug called melphalan, which is then removed before it can leak into the body. She is now due to have the first session of the drug later this month at a private hospital, after deciding that its proven success in shrinking and sometimes banishing tumours is worth the large sums she will have to pay.

Mary Smith of Novum Law, Peake’s solicitor, said the NHS withdrawing her care was potentially illegal. “For patients to be removed from trials and asked to self-fund potentially life-saving treatment when hospitals are empty, or running far below normal capacity, and so many doctors and other healthcare workers are able and willing to treat them, is unacceptable.

“It is not only a potential breach of contract, but also a likely breach of the government’s systematic duties under articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights to have a properly functioning healthcare framework in place to protect patients’ lives and provide equitable access to healthcare,” she added.

The disclosure of Peake’s plight comes amid a warning from one of Britain’s leading experts in the epidemiology of cancer that as many as 35,000 people could die from the disease over the next 12 months because they could not access care during the pandemic. Mark Lawler, professor of digital health at Queen’s University Belfast, cites the figure – a “worst-case scenario” – in Monday’s edition of Panorama, the BBC current affairs programme.

Lawler is the scientific lead for DATA-CAN, which collates data on cancer in the UK. He and colleagues have been analysing the potential impact of the suspension of care. He said: “Initial data we got was very worrying to us. We felt that worst-case scenario there would be 35,000 excess [cancer] deaths in the United Kingdom [in the next year]. Obviously scientists like to be right in terms of their analysis, but I hope I’m wrong in relation to that.”

However, NHS England dismissed Lawler’s projection as a “hypothetical prediction”. “After an entirely appropriate and necessary pausing of some cancer treatments during the outbreak, usually to protect cancer patients from immunocompromised infection, vital tests and treatments are going ahead in a safe way for thousands of patients, including by introducing Covid-protected cancer hubs,” a spokesperson said.

Panorama also features the case of Kelly Smith, from Manchester, who died of bowel cancer on 13 June after her chemotherapy was paused for 12 weeks when the pandemic hit.

Dr Gary Marlowe, a GP, said family doctors referred 60% fewer people with suspected symptoms of cancer for NHS diagnostic tests during April because people did not want to bother the NHS when it was focusing its efforts on Covid-19. In addition, “There’s a significant cohort of people who are very worried about coming anywhere near the NHS, because coming near the NHS means ‘I’m going to get Covid and therefore I’m going to get very, very ill’,” he said.

Prof Pat Price, a clinical oncologist, told Panorama that during the outbreak radiotherapy machines in some hospitals were “lying idle … they could have saved lives”. Patients who could have had the treatment safely were unable to access it, she added. Cancer services needed to be restarted as a matter of urgency to save as many lives as possible, Price said.

But Prof Peter Johnson, NHS England’s national clinical director for cancer, said services were suspended so that patients at risk on account of their disease were not put at extra risk from the coronavirus as a result of being treated.

“In particular, the risks and benefits of things like chemotherapy where, if the chemotherapy isn’t absolutely crucial but it might be dangerous in terms of increasing your risk of coronavirus … This wasn’t a kind of attempt to police who should have treatment and who shouldn’t. It was more an attempt to try and help people think very clearly.”

• Panorama: Britain’s Cancer Crisis, BBC One, Monday 6 July at 7.30pm