Immunotherapy hailed as ‘treatment of hope’ against cancer

Immunotherapy, a biological therapy that works by helping the immune system fight cancer, has been hailed as a treatment of hope, with experts pointing to evidence it literally plucked patients from the jaws of certain death.

According to global pharmaceutical company MSD, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world, with around one in six deaths due to the disease.

In 2018, about 9.6 million people died of cancer in South Africa alone and the burden of cancer continues to grow, according to MSD.

It was ranked as the second leading cause of death in SA in 2017, with 9.7% of deaths.

Oncologist Dr Devan Moodley said immunotherapy has “shifted the paradigm of death” from cancer and brought hope of longer and better quality of life for patients.

“One of the exciting bits about immunotherapy is that patients live longer. Some are of these people are cured, so that makes a huge difference in a sense that here’s a disease process that, across the board, everybody died.

“Now, there is hope that says people can get better and that is one of the things that immunotherapy provides,” he said.

However, he said the cost of the treatment meant it would not be available for the treatment of cancer in the public sector, saying any drug that cost more than R1,000 was unlikely to be accessible in the public sector.

“Unless somebody literally gives them the therapy for free, it is very unlikely that we will be seeing this freely available to indigent patients.

“Which is a shame, but it is what it is,” Moodley said.

But he said cancer patients could take advantage of the current immunotherapy clinical trials by various public institutions to get on the clinical trial programme.

Neren Rau, MSD’s director of policy and communication, said they took the challenge of access to the treatment very seriously and had created solutions for both the private and public health sector.

“On the public side, because immunotherapy has not made the medicine list yet, hospitals have to pay for it from their discretionary budget.

“So, it is dependent on the hospital capacity in the public sector to afford the therapy, but we have made it available as a considerably lower cost than the registered price through the public sector access programme,” he said.

– siphom@citizen.co.za

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