PULMONARY ARTERIAL HYPERTENSION TREATMENT CAMPAIGN

That this House welcomes the announcement by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) that it has, following an outcry from patient groups and clinicians and with the agreement of Ministers, removed from its work programme the proposed appraisal of drugs for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PH); notes that 75 per cent. of PH patients are now alive two years after diagnosis and that if the earlier, preliminary, recommendations from NICE had been carried out, it would have been a sentence of death for a significant number of the PH patient community; further notes that these lifesaving treatments are subject to national specialist commissioning arrangements and are only available in eight specialist and world-renowned PH centres in the UK; is pleased that NICE and Ministers recognise that NICE could not add value to this existing guidance and so removed it from the work programme; congratulates the Pulmonary Hypertension Association UK on its campaign to ensure patients have access to these lifesaving drugs; and congratulates Ministers and NICE for taking a common sense approach to this issue.