UK Cancer Patients Miss Life Saving Treatments Due to Brexit

According to analysis by experts, cancer patients in the UK miss out on lifesaving medications and clinical trials are scuppered by extra costs and bureaucratic hurdles imposed by Brexit.

The analysis was compiled by experts from multiple organizations which included Cancer Research UK, University of Southampton, and  research consultancy Hatch.

Their report said patients in the rest of Europe benefit from a “golden age” of treatments and research while patients in the UK languish without access.

In some instances the cost of shipping for medications has increased tenfold. In other instances the cost of importing a medication has increased fourfold due to red tape. Post-Brexit rules have made it difficult to impossible for UK doctors to enroll patients in potentially lifesaving international clinical trials, introduced delays, added costs and forced duplication of effort to repeat what has already been done elsewhere in Europe.

As an example, it cost an extra £22,000 to have a UK official certify batches of aspirin, an old and very familiar drug, for a cancer trial that had already been certified in the EU.

Aspects of cancer research hit the worst by Brexit include access to funding and collaboration for research, mobility of cancer researchers and regulation of clinical trials which has become unworkably cumbersome.

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