Medicines for breast cancer: The affordability controversy

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/esoo-mfb110415.php

Public Release: 5-Nov-2015
Medicines for breast cancer: The affordability controversy
European School of Oncology

New and better drugs to treat diseases such as advanced breast cancer will have little effect on improving patient outcomes if a country does not have good healthcare structures in place, Professor Richard Sullivan told the Advanced Breast Cancer Third International Consensus Conference today (Friday).

Without good systems, Prof Sullivan, of the Institute of Cancer Policy, King's Health Partners Comprehensive Cancer Centre, King's College London (UK), said there was little point in even discussing whether breast cancer drugs were affordable or not. "As things stand, I think many of the new molecular targeted agents are not affordable to many European countries, and this is only going to get worse."

However, in a second presentation, David Taylor, Emeritus Professor of Pharmaceutical and Public Health Policy at the University College London School of Pharmacy (UK), told the conference that although individual drugs can appear to be expensive, their cost is offset by many other drugs becoming cheaper over time as their patent protection expires and, overall, the spending on drugs at national and global levels remains stable. Although, in richer countries, the spending on medicines has grown in absolute terms, it has remained stable as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP).

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"The economics of breast cancer can be a way of looking at a system, understanding where the priorities are and who is doing what. It's also the single biggest lever for changing things," he said. "Convincing governments that losing women to premature death and other illnesses and conditions resulting from the disease costs them a lot of money is the only thing that's going to bring about change. We also need to quantify the costs of informal care and direct healthcare. The informal care costs are about the impoverishing effect that breast cancer has on the family beyond the loss of the woman, and the direct healthcare costs are about ensuring that as you put money into your systems of care, you get the best value in return. It's about being logical about your expenditures. We see too many countries saying they have to have the very latest breast cancer medicines, and I think that's deranged! Where's your surgery, where's your early diagnosis, where's your radiotherapy? Forget medicines - if you haven't got those basic building blocks in place, it's a waste of time even discussing an essential medicines list for breast cancer."

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