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The NHS has won a legal battle against the pharmaceutical industry, which will lead patients with the most common form of blindness to receive a much cheaper but still highly effective drug.
The High Court has backed an offer from 12 groups of NHS Clinical Commissioners in northeastern England to give people suffering from an aggravating vision loss the drug Avastin.
Although commonly used to treat cancer, Avastin has also proven effective in fighting age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This decision could help the NHS save more than 100 million pounds a year, as Avastin is 30 times cheaper than the two existing treatments, Lucentis and Eylea.
"This is a common sense victory over commercial interests," said Dr. David Hambleton, the CCG's chief officer in South Tyneside, who is also a former geriatrician.
He was speaking after the court rejected the arguments of drug giants Novartis, who make Lucentis, and Bayer, the maker of Eylea. They had brought the action to try to stop the NHS using Avastin rather than their much more expensive treatments.
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