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WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES BY THE CONNÉTABLE OF ST. JOHN
ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 10th SEPTEMBER 2013
Question
Can the Minister give the number of occasions over the last 24 months that recommendations from urology consultants have prescribed the drug Arbiraterone to patients and how many times it has been prescribed by oncologists to patients with prostate cancer, giving details of numbers approved and those declined, and of those declined the reason for so doing, and whether the patients' general practitioners were consulted in reaching the decision, and if not why not?
Answer
Abiraterone was first licensed in September 2011 and was prescribed for the first patient in Jersey in January 2012 and has been routinely available for consultants to prescribe to patients with prostate cancer since June 2012. It would not be appropriate to disclose the precise number as, being so small, this would risk identifying the individuals concerned.
Prior to June 2012 there were individual requests from consultants to prescribe for small number of patients. all of which were approved.
No patient has been declined treatment with abiraterone.
In Jersey, abiraterone is not prescribed by urology consultants as all prescriptions are issue by oncology consultants.
The decision to make abiraterone routinely available followed publication of National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance in June 2012, which recommended that abiraterone, within its licensed indication, was a cost-effective use of health service resources. This decision was taken by the Health and Social Services Department Drugs and Therapeutics Committee.
GPs are kept informed by the cancer specialists regarding treatment choices for their patients but they are not routinely involved in the decision as to which drug treatment should be used as they are not specialists in this area of medicine.