Scots get drug that can save sight, but English don’t
‘Thousands of pensioners will go blind every year after the Government’s rationing watchdog said a sight-saving drug available in Scotland should not be given to NHS patients in England and Wales.
Patients’ groups and doctors condemned “cruel” draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
Nice rejected the use of Macugen for patients with the most common form of blindness, wet age-related macular degeneration, or AMD.
It said another drug, Lucentis, could be used but only if patients have gone almost blind in one eye and the disease is far progressed in the other.
It also restricted the use of Lucentis to a specific type of the condition which affects only around 20 per cent of sufferers.’
