HSSD forces terminally ill man to pay for drugs
A TERMINALLY ill man has been forced to pay thousands of pounds a month for all his medical expenses after starting on a new drug recommended by his oncologist – because the tablets are not on Guernsey's 'white list'.
A TERMINALLY ill man has been forced to pay thousands of pounds a month for all his medical expenses after starting on a new drug recommended by his oncologist – because the tablets are not on Guernsey's 'white list'.
Health and Social Services has told Roy Dashwood, 81, that he will have to pay for all his treatments, test and travel if he takes the drug.
'HSSD has a policy in conjunction with Social Security that where a patient chooses to have treatment not supported by the department that they can only do so by going private,' a spokesman said.
The department could not, he added, deal with a complex arrangement where part of the care was paid for by the user.
Mr Dashwood has advanced kidney cancer and was originally prescribed Panzopanib to shrink the tumour. But when it stopped working his oncologist recommended that he take a new drug, Inlyta, which is not on the States white list.
