Jane 'let down over cancer drug'

Mike Tomlinson, from Leeds, hit out after revealing that his wife had to travel to Nottingham to receive the cancer drug Lapatinib.

Mr Tomlinson was speaking at a news conference in Leeds where he called on the Government to make sure all patients had access to the same drugs. He said: "Jane has been fundamentally let down by an unjust system."

Later he added: "If this was your wife and you felt that for £6,700 you could give her a chance of an extended period of time, no-one knows how long that time would be, you would feel aggrieved. For £6,700, your wife wasn't worth it."

Mrs Tomlinson, 43, lost her seven-year battle with terminal cancer in September this year. The mother-of-three defied doctors who gave her just months to live after her diagnosis in 2000 and raised more than £1.75 million through a series of gruelling endurance events.

Mr Tomlinson detailed how she battled to get access to Lapatinib. He said her medical team in Leeds decided the drug was her best option. However, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust had taken the decision not to participate in a GlaxoSmithKline-sponsored access study of the treatment.

He told reporters: "Clearly it was quite distressing for Jane to find that she would no longer be able to have the treatment that everyone thought would be most suitable for her. It caused a lot of distress to her and a lot of upset."

Mr Tomlinson said further approaches were made to the drug company itself and to the NHS in Nottingham, where she was eventually accepted on to the trial in April.

He added: "There was no doubt in our minds that delay and inability to get treatment had a long-term impact on Jane's health at that time. Clearly ... we were raising money for the hospital at the same time as Jane's options were being limited. We made a conscious decision to continue supporting the Yorkshire Cancer Centre and the Trust because we felt not doing so would be petulant and wrong."

Mr Tomlinson said his wife was extremely proud to have worked for the Trust and said it had her "unflinching support" as an employee. Mrs Tomlinson worked as a radiographer. However, he added: "She was extremely cross that there were inconsistencies across the health service which allowed some patients treatment and some patients not treatment."