THE HEALTH Minister has told Parliament he would immediately approve £200,000 to be spent on a new drug for thalassaemia sufferers.
The House Health Committee heard that £200,000 was enough to cover the need of 12 patients, with the drug costing each sufferer £16,500 annually.
Committee Chairman, DISY’s Eleni Theocharous, sent out a plea to the Ad Hoc Committee that convened yesterday to examine Minister Charis Charalambous’ request, to authorise the minister to offer the drug free to all patients.
Talking after the meeting, Theocharous said the new drug, which controls iron levels, should be made available to all thalassaemic patients and should be included in next year’s annual budget.
As minister Charalambous explained, in order to cover 50 of the island’s 72 listed thalassaemia patients it would cost around £800,000. In total, there are currently 600 Cypriots suffering from the condition.
The decision to endorse expenses for the drug, he added, was made to cover those in most desperate need of the therapy but who are unable to fund it.
Charalambous told deputies that doctors had initially disagreed with the importation of PER OS to Cyprus, “for various reasons”.
Michalis Angastiniotis of the International Thalassaemia Federation claimed that one of the reasons the specific drug was not administered immediately to sufferers was because it was too expensive.
He explained that the intravenous drug that is currently administered in Cyprus was positioned under the skin for 12 hours a day for life, which makes the entire process extremely painful.
“Thalassaemia patients in Cyprus should be considered heroes,” Angastiniotis said.
Furthermore, he told deputies that PER OS would increase the viability and quality of life for patients, while he added that 60 per cent of thalassaemic patients react positively to the blood transfusion procedure.
But Angastiniotis proposed it was left to the doctor to decide which therapy to administer.
A doctor at the Thalassaemia Centre, Sotiroulla Christou, said: “As doctors, we do not want to replace the therapy of all thalassaemic patients with this drug,” adding that doctors would rather use the specific treatment in the event that already existing therapies have failed.
“I personally would not administer this medication to all patients. It is our job to fit the therapy around the patient’s needs,” Christou pointed out.
The Chairman of the International Thalassaemia Federation, Panos Englezos, said that the delay in administering the specific treatment was an embarrassment for Cyprus, while he pointed out that Albania was already offering the drug to 600 of its thalassaemic patients.
According to Englezos, the drug is currently circulating in 72 countries and is being administered to around 18,000 patients.
“After a 40-year battle to relieve thalassaemics from the painful procedure of blood transfusions, we are talking today about 12 patients; all patients should have the right to this new drug,” he pointed out.
The vice chairman of the Pancyprian Anti-anaemic Association, Stelios Minas, said the association was “not concerned with the drug’s costs” and demanded the treatment is administered to all patients without exception.
But standing head of the Pharmaceutical Services, Pantelitsa Koupepidou, pointed out that current treatments cost thalassaemic patients around £4,500 a year. The new procedure would cost £16,500 per person.
