War hero told: You can't have jabs to save sight until you are blind in one eye

More than 100 GPs have sent £5 cheques to Downing Street, made out to the Prime Minister, which they want to be put towards the cost of a cure for Second World War pilot Jack Tagg.

Mr Tagg, 88, suffers from "wet" macular degeneration, the main cause of sight loss in Britain, affecting a quarter of a million people. It can lead to blindness in as little as three months - but with prompt treatment it can be reversed.

Now he and his wife Gabrielle, 77, are selling their house to pay for an £11,000 course of injections.

Last week, Mr Tagg was told by a consultant at Torbay District General Hospital in Torquay that a course of injections of the Lucentis drug could save his sight.

But at £760 a shot, for a course of between three and 14 injections, he was told that under Government guidelines it was regarded as "too expensive" unless he was already blind in one eye.

Mr Tagg, who was a member of the RAF Balloon Command during the war and flew Wellington bombers, went for his first privately-funded injections on Friday.

He said: "I am selling up under protest. If I have to go for the full treatment it will end up costing me about &£11,000."

Martin Wrankin, a friend and GP, placed an open letter to the Prime Minister on a doctors-only internet site, saying the case typified "the incompetence of your Labour Government in managing the NHS".

The letter continued: "Jack is not a wealthy man but his wife has decided that they must sell their house to pay for the treatment. He risked his life for us ...we believe that our patients would prefer you to spend a few thousand pounds on Jack in his hour of need.

"The doctors who have added their names to this list will all post on a cheque for £5 payable to Mr Gordon Brown. We don't expect you to get Jack his treatment on the NHS. We would simply ask you to cash our cheques and forward the lump sum to Mr Tagg."

More than 120 doctors have signed up to his campaign so far. Many have also posted messages of support, including one who wrote that "it has got to be worth a fiver to kick Gordon's gluteal muscles".

The row will be embarrassing for Mr Brown, who suffered from eye damage when he was a 17-year-old student at Edinburgh University.

Despite three operations to repair detached retinas, aggravated by a rugby injury, he was left blind in his left eye, although a fourth procedure successfully saved the sight in his right eye.

The cost today to the taxpayer of his four NHS operations would be £5,588.

Mr Tagg added: "When I went for my treatment, there was a lady of 60 with the same condition who had been forced to wait until one eye went. They referred to her injections as 'treating the last eye'."

Mr Tagg said he blamed the Government for his predicament --not the hospital staff.

"The frontline staff are amazingly good. It's the system which is at fault.

"I was told that you can't put two pints into a pint pot, meaning there was not enough money to pay for everything."

But Dr Wrankin said that Mr Tagg's sight could be restored by the NHS for substantially less than the projected amount.

He said: "There is a treatment for bowel cancer which is also effective for macular degeneration and could be delivered for a fraction of the cost, but the organisation of the Health Service is too poor to achieve it."

Last night, a spokesman for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said: "Until we issue our guidelines on the drug treatment of wet macular degeneration in six weeks' time, hospital trusts should make their own treatment decisions."

A spokesman for the Royal National Institute of Blind People said: "People are having to face a stark choice - either pay for private treatment, or risk going blind. How can we be allowing this to happen in Britain in 2008?"