Preventing Avoidable Sight Loss

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) for securing this important debate; there have already been useful contributions. I want to make a short speech. I declare an interest: before I was a Member of Parliament, I worked in the NHS as an ophthalmologist.

I hope that the Government can achieve their own 20/20 vision for eye care in England. I hope that the Minister will go away with knowledge of what that should mean for the Government. We have heard about delays in the NHS. The figure from the Royal College of Ophthalmologists is that 20 people a month in England experience sight loss because of delays with appointments. I do not know about anyone else, but I have found that the hairdresser and dentist are better at telling me about appointment times than the NHS. It is the 21st century, and I believe that that is negligence—I do not know if lawyers would call it wilful negligence. It is one thing for a doctor in a clinic to have to tell a patient, “I am sorry, there is nothing I can do for you,”—it is the worst part of the job—but it is even worse to have to say, “If you had come to me a month ago, I might have been able to help you.” That is England today. The NHS and Government need to be transparent about where they are letting patients down.

The other 20 in my 20/20 plea to the Government—I have mentioned it to the Minister—concerns the £20 million cap that NHS England is talking about for the annual cost of new NHS drugs. The Minister is aware that for dry macular degeneration—the commonest form of macular degeneration, accounting for 90% of cases—there is currently no treatment. Those are among the sad cases in clinics when people are told, “There may be nothing we can do.” However, a phase 3 trial is being undertaken of a drug that may help with dry macular degeneration. If everyone present were to have an examination, I am sure that there would be people here now with signs of dry macular degeneration—perhaps even the Minister himself. The drug will be an exciting change in medicine. It is not about just preventing sight loss; it is about maintaining independence. I do not believe that the £20 million cap takes into account the cost when someone loses their central vision, through losing independence and depending more on social care or family members who may take time off work to help.

The Government need 20/20 vision. We need to be transparent with patients. We heard about the case of Jean Rugg, who was losing her sight because of delays with appointments. A lady who came to my constituency surgery told me she was getting private treatment for her husband, because she realised that the delay in the monthly appointment for an injection for wet macular degeneration would cost him his sight. She was not angry; she just wanted me to be informed. If there is a £20 million cap, every MP will have people in their surgery saying, “I am trying to sell what I have to save my family member’s sight.” The £20 million cap must not apply to sight-saving treatments. I hope that there will be other speeches—it is a wide field—but that is my plea for the Government to have 20/20 vision.