The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is urging NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) in England and Wales to follow the example of Scotland and recommend that Lucentis be made freely available on the NHS to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
On Monday the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) recommended that Scottish patients should receive the drug on the NHS, alongside Macugen which it approved last August to treat wet AMD.
In a short statement, the SMC said that Ranibizumab (Lucentis) is now accepted for treatment of neovascular (wet) AMD and the regulator added that the cost implications of this ruling in Scotland would be around £2.4m in year one and rising to £7.1m by year five.
NICE is due to announce its ruling on whether Lucentis and Macugen should be made available on the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in September.
However, campaigners, including a former Labour MP, have argued that thousands could lose their sight before Lucentis is assessed by NICE.
As reported in Optician, (March 16), Alice Mahon, a former MP, gave up her legal fight against Calderdale PCT for its refusal to pay for Lucentis after she was advised that the delay had meant that the drug's use was no longer a viable option for her. Mahon was diagnosed with AMD two months earlier after being referred by her optometrist to Calderdale Royal Hospital.
The announcement by the SMC has prompted the RNIB to renew its calls for NICE to make Lucentis available to NHS patients in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Patients in England are currently subject to a postcode lottery as figures suggest that 80 per cent of the PCTs refuse to fund the treatment.
Steve Winyard, RNIB's head of campaigns, said: 'The SMC's decision is fantastic news for patients in Scotland. But wet AMD patients in other parts of the UK face an uphill struggle to get hold of the treatments.
'Many PCTs are hiding behind the lack of NICE guidance and are giving a blanket no when patients are recommended for the drugs, even though the Department of Health has said that PCTs must not do this.'
He added: 'We have a real chance to turn wet AMD, which devastates so many lives, into a largely treatable condition.'