​The ABPI comments followed national media reports that NICE is set to recommend against the use of a bone cancer medicine in England and Wales.

"It is arrant nonsense that a medicine should be judged to be cost-effective in Dumfries and not in Carlisle," said David Fisher, Commercial Director of the ABPI.

"These life-saving and life-extending therapies deserve much more understanding treatment from a body that is meant to support clinical excellence, not just make narrow cost-effectiveness decision on necessarily limited evidence."

The ABPI added that, even when a positive decision is made, patients often still do not receive the recommended medicine because there is a multiplicity of other hurdles to overcome at various levels. These include: prescribing targets, hospital pharmacy budgets, local GP and hospital formularies of approved medicines, prescribing incentive schemes, and primary care advisers monitoring medicines prescribing.

For further information, please contact: ABPI Press Office 020 7747 1410