THE family of Salford cancer patient Jean Murphy have slammed health bosses for spending £17,000 on denying her a life-prolonging drug.

Figures obtained exclusively by the Advertiser under the Freedom of Information Act show that Salford Primary Care Trust spent a total of £17,282 in the legal battle at the High Court in London.

The money, which could have funded almost six months worth of Sutent, was paid to Hill Dickinson LLP, a legal firm with offices in Manchester and London, to defend the PCT’s decision not to pay for Jean’s life-prolonging cancer treatment.

The 63-year-old grandmother was treated for renal cancer initially with another drug but suffered a bad reaction and asked to be put on Sutent in May, but Salford Primary Care Trust refused to fund her treatment, saying her circumstances were not exceptional.

Despite an appeal, the PCT again turned her down and she then took the case to the High Court in London.

However, in October, the PCT reversed their decision and have now agreed to fund the drug until Jean no longer needs it.

Jean’s daughter, Cathy Ostasz, branded health bosses ‘wasteful’ and says the money could have been used on more important things - one cycle of Sutent treatment costs £3,500.

She said: "I think it is absolutely shocking that they can spend so much money on fighting about whether or not to give her the drug when, for that amount of money, they could have just paid for it anyway.

"It seems wasteful and ironic to me - they claimed the reason why my mum could not have the drug is because it costs too much, but then they wasted all this money on solicitors."

Jean, who lives in Cleveland Avenue, Hope, said: "I just do not understand what these people are thinking about.

"I am very angry to hear that the PCT could spend this amount of money when they were denying me the chance to even try the drug - that would only have cost £3,500 for the one cycle. I think that this whole thing has been farcical."

Salford PCT chief executive Dr Mike Burrows said: "The potential cost of providing the high cost cancer drug Sutent, to all patients in Greater Manchester would be more than £3m a year. The PCT needs to have procedures for handling such applications.

"Mrs Murphy’s legal advisers sought a judicial review of the process and the PCT felt it was appropriate to subject its procedures to legal scrutiny.

"If PCTs did not make and defend these difficult funding decisions the NHS would rapidly become unaffordable and major cuts would need to be made across other healthcare services."