Email your MP: Give people with secondary breast cancer More Time To Live

We urgently need to change the system for deciding which life-extending drugs are made available on the NHS in England.

Because right now, some people living with incurable secondary breast cancer can’t access the treatments they need to stay alive.

• What's the problem?

  NICE is the organisation that decides whether drugs can be made available on the NHS. To work out what can be spent on different treatments, they rate conditions by how severe they are. The more severe the condition, the more the NHS can spend on drugs to treat it.

  But NICE has set the bar for severity too high.

  It means some people with incurable secondary breast cancer can’t get the drugs they need because their condition isn’t considered severe enough – despite them having only months to live.

  NICE need to lower the bar for what counts as a very severe condition, so that more money can be spent on drugs to treat them. But first, the Government needs to remove any restrictions that could stop them doing this. And that's where we need your help!

  Take action

Ask your MP to help  

Send them a quick email asking them to write to the Health Secretary. He has the power to change the system, so people with secondary breast cancer can access the drugs they need. 

The more MPs who contact the Health Secretary, the more pressure we can put on him to take action. Your email could make all the difference!

• What about Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland?

  In England, the organisation that decides whether drugs can be made available on the NHS is the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, usually known as NICE.

  They make recommendations that apply in England, but these decisions are usually adopted by Wales and Northern Ireland - so fixing the system matters here too.

  Scotland makes their own decisions through their equivalent of NICE, the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC).

  Take action