UK: Alzheimer’s sufferers hit by further delay in NHS approval for vital drugs
From The Telegraph-UK:
Thousands of Alzheimer’s sufferers will have to wait until next year to learn if they will get vital drugs on the National Health Service.
There was an angry response yesterday as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s drugs rationing agency, confirmed that it will delay its verdict on the drugs.
The postponement comes as it emerged that most patients newly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s are also having to wait up to five months for an appointment at a “memory clinic” in order to confirm the condition and obtain a prescription for the drugs.
The drugs – rivastigmine (Exelon), donepezil (Aricept) and galantamine (Reminyl) – cost around £2.50 per day per patient, resulting in an NHS bill of £60 million a year.
They are unique in their ability to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease, but in March Nice sparked controversy by ruling that the NHS would stop prescribing anti-Alzheimer’s drugs free of charge to new patients.
A review was ordered and the decision on the treatments, called cholinesterase inhibitors, which are currently prescribed to about 54,000 patients, was put off until July, only to be delayed again until next month. But now it has emerged that newly diagnosed Alzheimer’s sufferers will have to wait until January at the very earliest to find out if the NHS will meet the cost of the drugs.
Editor’s note: Experts extimate that the number of persons with Alzheimer’s and other dementias will increase four to five fold by 2050–resulting in some 114 million persons globally with dementia.