Who should be liable for funding recombinant factor VIII?

BMJ 1998;316:1385 ( 2 May )

Letters

Who should be liable for funding recombinant factor VIII?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ On 26 February the Department of Health announced that, acting on advice from the Committee on the Safety of Medicines,it will inform health authorities of "arrangements to ensure thatrecombinant factor VIII is made available to those [haemophiliac]children under the age of 16 who are not already receiving it,and to new patients."¹ This policy is a response to the perceivedthreat from blood products contaminated with the new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakobdisease prion. This threat is largely theoretical,^1-3 althoughmany haemophiliac patients did become infected with hepatitisC virus and HIV from contaminated plasma derived factor VIII.

The average cost of haemophilia treatment for each patient is about £17 000 a year; recombinant factor VIII would increaseaverage costs by about £13 000 each year,³ with the additionalbenefits being unknown. Whatever values lie behind these decisions,the policy will at least be a national one. No "postcode rationing"will . . . [Full text of this article]