A campaigning multiple sclerosis patient has highlighted the daily battle sufferers face getting access to treatment.

It is a year since right-to-die campaigner Debbie Purdy, of Undercliffe, Bradford, first asked doctors about trying a drug called Sativex, which helps relieve spasms.

However, because it has not been assessed by NICE, it is not routinely funded by the NHS in Bradford.

Now, suffering spasms so bad she is unable to lie in bed at night, she is preparing to ask her neurologist at St Luke’s Hospital, Bradford, to support her bid to be prescribed the drug Sativex.

“It is such a postcode lottery,” she said. “If I lived in Oxford, I could just be prescribed it, but I live in Bradford, so I can’t.

“MS is not a terminal condition, but suicide rates are very high because people find it too much to bear coping with the symptoms.”

The drug was licensed by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency last year and is available from some health trusts, but a panel of regional experts in MS in Yorkshire said there was no evidence of benefits to patients from the drugs and decided Primary Care Trusts in Yorkshire should not prescribe it.

However Debbie, who won a fight to clarify the law on assisted suicide, has exhausted all other drugs currently available.

She said: “I expect to get it. I have a huge amount of faith. The support that is given to me by the MS team in Bradford is amazing. Our doctors are brilliant and I think we are lucky to have them.

“It might not work for me. It only works in 60 per cent of cases, but other drugs that I have tried do not work particularly well. The side effects can leave me sleeping 20 hours a day.

“It is not actually a life I want to live.”

A spokesperson for NHS Bradford and Airedale said: “In line with a Yorkshire and Humber-wide policy, we do not routinely fund Sativex for patients with MS, and there is currently no NICE guidance on the use of this drug.

  • Read the full story in Wednesday's T&A