PARLIAMENT has heard from a Derbyshire MP about the heart-wrenching stories of cancer patients unable to get life-giving medicine on the NHS because officials say it is not "cost-effective".

In a debate last night, Mid Derbyshire MP Pauline Latham said a draft decision that the drug Ipilimumab should not be supplied freely to NHS patients was robbing families of precious time with their loved ones.

MPs and a health minister heard that one patient who attended a meeting set up by the Derbyshire MP said she just wanted to live longer so "her boys" would remember her.

Ipilimumab treats melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, and a disease of which Tory MP Mrs Latham has personal experience after her brother, Michael Tuxworth, died from it at the age of 54.

In an emotional speech, she said: "Lack of access to the drug is still a major concern to all melanoma patients, and of course, to their families and friends too.

"For them to know that there is a drug on the market which has been proven to prolong the lives of sufferers– if even for only a few months or years – and they cannot gain access to it through the normal channels is distressing."

According to the British Journal of Cancer, the incidence of melanoma is expected to rise by 52% by 2030.

It affects more younger people than other cancers, with over a third of all cases affecting people under the age of 55.

Ipilimumab encourages the body to produce more cancer-killing cells and was launched in the UK last July.

Mrs Latham said it was the first major advance in melanoma treatment in 30 years.

But despite that, on October 14, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which controls what drugs are provided on the NHS, made a draft decision not to recommend Ipilimumab for melanoma as it was not a "cost-effective use of resources".

Mrs Latham accepted the drug was available to some patients, including those in Derbyshire, through the Cancer Drugs Fund – a body set up by the Government to support extra cancer treatments – but patients in many areas could not get it, she said.

Mrs Latham set up a meeting in Westminster last year and produced a report, with the help of cancer charity Factor 50, to lobby the Government and NICE to change the draft decision.

One 30-year-old woman said during the meeting: "I need to live. I have to live for my children.

"I just want a few more years so that my boys will remember me."

A male patient said: "As a 40-year-old otherwise fit father of three young children, Ipilimumab offers me the best chance to win my war with melanoma.

"It has the possibility to return me to a normal life made of the things most people take for granted and that I, and my family, can now value every single day."

Mrs Latham said yesterday: "I can add a personal plea for help because my own brother died from a malignant melanoma 11 years ago this month, at the age of 54, one week after his birthday, leaving his wife and two teenage children.

"I know how debilitating this form of cancer is and how quickly it can spread. Apart from fairly radical surgery he had very few options in terms of the drugs on offer then."

Melanoma patients are expected to survive for six to nine months but, in trials, 46% of patients on Ipilimumab were alive after a year.

Health Minister Paul Burstow said the Government was dedicated to broadening access to treatment and said there was hope that NICE would reconsider.

He said: "The manufacturer of this drug has now proposed a patient access scheme and the Department of Health has agreed that NICE can consider the fact that there is a scheme."