A CANCER sufferer has called on fellow patients not to give up without a fight after it emerged millions of pounds to fund vital durgs have not been spent.

The Cancer Drugs Fund was introduced by the Government in October to give people who have been denied key drugs on the NHS a last chance to get treatment.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced the scheme in local campaigner Clive Stone’s front room in Freeland, near Witney.

Mr Stone had been a leading light in unveiling the postcode lottery in cancer treatment across the country.

However, five months later it has emerged just £189,000 has been spent of the £3.4m set aside for patients in the NHS South Central Strategic Health Authority (SHA), which covers Oxfordshire.

Janet Hodges, from Carterton, is one of the lucky few who was given breast cancer drug Lapatinib thanks to the fund Mrs Hodges was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and has since learned it has spread to her brain.

After treatment that included a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Mrs Hodges’ doctor suggested she try Lapatinib.

But NHS Oxfordshire, which decides where cash is spent, refused to fund her £21,000-a-year treatment so her doctor applied to the fund.

She said: “When you get the (original PCT) letter telling you are not an ‘exceptional case’ it feels awful.

“But the way I saw it was, ‘well I may not be exceptional to you, but I am to my family, and I am to me’.”

She said having a cancer diagnosis came with so many knock backs that many people gave up the fight when they were refused drugs.

Mrs Hodges said it was vital people remembered the fund and thought more should be done to publicise it.

She added: “I don’t think it is very good that there is still so much money left. Not enough people know about the fund. It is hardly in the Government’s interest to advertise it all over the place.

“There are so many let downs along the way with cancer, but I would say to people, if you get turned down, don’t give up without a fight.”

The Department of Health has also confirmed another £200m-a-year Cancer Drugs Fund would be launched in April. Details of how it will work will be released at that time.

Figures have shown that out of 49 applications in the South Central area to the drug fund, only £189,000 has been spent on 39 patients. It is thought about 20 of these have been Oxfordshire cancer sufferers.

Applications to the fund are made by a consultant specialist, who recommends a drug on behalf of the patient.

All applications have been dealt within 10 working days.

The West Midlands SHA has so far committed £3.43m of its £5.4m allocation, on 155 patients.

In the South West SHA, meanwhile, numbers are too low to report without risking NHS confidentiality guidelines.