Health: Hepatitis C

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Mancroft

Thursday 28th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I feel almost as if we are living on a different planet—of course there are going to be budgetary constraints. Some of these new drugs are hugely expensive. We have a good scheme—the PPRS scheme that the noble Lord referred to—which enables us to get rebates from big pharma, but some of these new drugs are extremely expensive. I cannot say what the exact cost is of this interferon-free treatment for hepatitis C, but I can tell the House that it is many tens of thousands of pounds for a treatment. There are 220,000 people who could benefit from this treatment, according to the noble Lord, Lord Patel—that means many billions of pounds. If we spend many billions on this particular drug, there are many billions that we will not be able to spend on mental health or in other parts of the NHS.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend be kind enough to tell the House what the 200,000 people who will not receive treatment this year are expected to do, how long they are expected to wait for treatment and—bearing in mind that most or many of them will develop cirrhosis and liver cancer and go on to die—how much it will cost the taxpayer and the National Health Service to care for and treat each patient through to death? How much less is it than the cost of providing treatment today?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, there are many people who suffer from hepatitis C who are asymptomatic and do not know that they have hepatitis C, so I do not know if the figure of 220,000 is true or not. But people with it can have treatment using the drug interferon—which is an extremely unpleasant treatment that can take up to a year and has some very horrible side effects. This new drug is, in many ways, a miracle drug. It is a fantastic drug, but it is incredibly expensive. We have to accept that, not just for hepatitis C but for many cancer treatments, there are going to be some drugs that are too expensive to spend on huge numbers of people.