Health bosses are being urged to change their policy and offer a life-extending drug to all kidney cancer patients in Oxfordshire.

The call for a review came after Andy Crabb, 50, from Abingdon, won an appeal to get the drug Sunitinib, also known as Sutent, on the NHS this week.

He was initially denied funding for the life-extending drug by Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust (PCT).

But, after a year-long campaign, the trust said Mr Crabb would no longer have to pay £3,300 every six weeks for the treatment.

Despite the decision, 24 other patients in the county who have been denied the drug will have to wait until January for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) to decide whether the drug should be funded on the NHS.

Clive Stone, chairman of the county’s Friends of Renal Oncology Group (Frog), said it was brilliant news that Mr Crabb had won his case, but added that it was ‘cruel’ to make other patients wait until January for a final decision.

He said: “There are 40 patients in our group. Some of them have the drug funded by medical insurance but others do not and they need the treatment now.”

Earlier this year, kidney cancer patients Martyn Sumner, from Oxford, and Jim Wheeler, from Kidlington, both died after they were denied funding for the drug.

In a letter to PCT chief executive Andrea Young, Mr Stone wrote: “The purpose of this letter is to ask that you immediately reconsider your present policy, as it does now look as though NICE will eventually agree to recommend that Sutent be funded on the NHS after all.

“We ask you please to show us some common humanity and enable this drug to be immediately made available to those who need it. Swift action on your part will prevent more lives being lost unnecessarily while we await the decision from Nice, which has been further delayed. Sutent is the only effective drug available to us.”

Mr Stone added: “There are people in the group who are in tears because they cannot get this drug and they don’t know who to turn to.”

He said Health Secretary Alan Johnson this week announced a number of new measures, which included instructions to Nice to change the assessment criteria for “end of life” drugs like Sutent with immediate effect.

Sutent, or Sunitinib, is licensed for use in the UK but only 27 of the 152 PCTs offer funding, creating a postcode lottery.

Kidney cancer patient Stephen Dallison, 35, from Oxford, who also won an appeal for funding for the drug, said: “The drug does work, it has definitely worked for me, so the PCT should start funding it for patients on a trial basis at the very least.”

Annika Howard, a spokeswoman for Oxfordshire PCT, said: “I can confirm that Andrea Young, the chief executive, has received a letter from Clive Stone and that the PCT will be responding directly to Mr Stone early next week.”

affrench@oxfordmail.co.uk