An open letter to Yvette Cooper MP
Read this open letter to new Health Secretary Yvette Cooper to welcome her into her new role as Health Secretary.
The Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Department of Health and Social Care
39 Victoria Street
London, SW1H 0EU
Dear Secretary of State,
Congratulations on your appointment as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. We’d like to ask for your urgent support to ensure the life-extending metastatic breast cancer treatment, Enhertu, is made available on the NHS.
Enhertu is a game-changing treatment for people living with HER2-low incurable metastatic breast cancer. It is the first licensed, targeted treatment for this type of cancer and it can extend lives by an average of six months. It offers people like us the hope of more time – time with our families. With our children. Time that we could be making precious memories with the people we love.
But it was rejected by NICE for use on the NHS in 2024 because it was too expensive. Since then, thousands of people have missed out on the drug, and many have died. Robbed of the extra time it could have given them.
While Enhertu remains out of reach for people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is available in 26 other European countries. This includes Scotland, creating an unacceptable postcode lottery for access in the UK.
However, the recent increase to the NICE cost-effectiveness threshold for new medicines presents an opportunity for the pharmaceutical companies Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca, NHS England and NICE to finally reach an agreement and make Enhertu available as soon as possible.
Nearly 70,000 people have signed a petition launched by Breast Cancer Now, supported by metastatic charities METUPUK and Make 2nds Count, calling for a deal to be made. And on 23 July, people living with HER2-low metastatic breast cancer, along with their friends and families, joined a queue in London to represent the thousands of people facing an agonising wait for NHS access to Enhertu. Empty shoes in the queue represented people who have tragically died without access to the drug.
Over 50 MPs have added their names to an Early Day Motion calling for an agreement to be reached, and even more have been in touch directly with your predecessor, the Rt Hon James Murray MP, about this issue.
While we know the government is not directly involved in negotiations around access to new drugs, as Secretary of State for Health you can play a critical role by asking all of the parties involved to ensure a solution is found to make Enhertu available on the NHS now.
We’d like to urgently meet you, alongside patient organisations, to discuss this issue, and hope that you will make Enhertu a priority during your first weeks in office. Because for those of us living with HER2-low metastatic breast cancer - including many of the undersigned - we don’t have time to wait. We need Enhertu now.
Please show your support for people with incurable metastatic breast cancer and provide the leadership needed to help secure a positive outcome.
Signed by:
Carol Dixon
Jane Edwards
Jodie Connolly
Kate Wills
Kathryn Hulland
Laura Price
Lee Daniel
Liz Hand
Nora McCall
Ruthie Wood
Sophie Blake
Sharon Brookes-Wade
Viv Smith
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