PCTs fail to fund age-related macular degeneration treatment, says report

Primary care trusts are under fire from the AMD Alliance UK over failure to fund treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration.

In what is AMD Week, the Alliance claims 16,000 people a year in England are being condemned to blindness because the anti-VEGF drug Macugen, which became available in May 2006, is not being funded. All the indications are that things are no better in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The report, Left to Pay Their Own Way, suggests that 90 per cent of PCTs have failed to fund the treatment and even when a PCT has funded Macugen, patient numbers have been miniscule. In a region covering eight PCTs, for example, out of 1,800 potential patients only 36 received the drug.