Published 25 June 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2570
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b2570

News

Teacher launches case against primary care trust over refusal to pay for treatment

Clare Dyer

1 BMJ

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

A trainee teacher with primary refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma has launched a High Court action against her primary care trust, NHS Surrey, which has refused to pay for her treatment with an unlicensed drug.

Philippa Bigham, aged 28, from Frimley, Surrey, has been given a prognosis of two years’ survival without a bone marrow transplantation. But her medical team at the Royal Free Hospital in London want her to have treatment with radiolabelled basiliximab, a monoclonal antibody conjugated with radioactive iodine and also known as CHT-25, before she has the transplantation.

The primary care trust has refused to pay for the drug, which costs £3000 ({euro}3500; $4900) for a course of treatment. Basiliximab is licensed in the United Kingdom for use in renal transplant rejection but the radiolabelled version is not yet licensed.

NHS Surrey said in a statement that applications for funding for unlicensed drugs and those still in . . . [Full text of this article]


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