A WOMAN who campaigned on behalf of her mother for her to receive a drug not yet licensed in Ireland to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma has been told that it will now be made available.
Teresa Hayden last week emailed “every TD in the Dáil” on behalf of her mother Angela, a 50-year-old from Blanchardstown in Dublin, describing her plight: “There is no time or reason to beat about the bush, my mother is dying. She will be dead in a few weeks and we have just been informed that there is no longer funding for the treatment she needs and we had been expecting her to receive any day now,” the email read. “She is the person that holds our family together and she will be dead within a month if something isn’t done now.”
Angela Hayden was first diagnosed in late 2010 with late-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer. She received chemotherapy and went into remission but was rediagnosed in early 2011.
After other treatments were unsuccessful, doctors in Beaumont informed the family that a new drug, called Adcetris Brentuximab Vedotin had been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration which, they were told, could increase her chances of survival by 70 per cent.
Teresa said the family were told the drug would be made available to her by the start of November. But, when they asked about its availability, they were told the hospital had run out of funding.
She said the hospital brought the case to the Health Service Executive but the family received no further word until after she brought her mother’s plight to the attention of various media outlets.
The family yesterday received a call to say the drug had been approved for her mother.
“We are very relieved . . . She has a chance now and that’s all we ever wanted,” Teresa said.
“But as happy as I am . . . bureaucracy nearly killed my mother. It should never come to a situation where families are appealing to a TD for a hospital bed or going to the media.
“It’s upsetting to think that there might be people out there just watching the clock tick by waiting for answers.”
A statement released yesterday afternoon by a spokesman for Beaumont hospital said it did not comment on individual patients.
However, he said recent discussions with the HSE had resulted in the decision “to authorise the use of Adcetris Brentuximab Vedotin, where appropriate, in the treatment of refractory CD30 positive lymphomas”.
The drug is not licensed in Ireland but can be administered with special authorisation from the Irish Medicines Board. It has been used twice before in Ireland.