Latest news with #chemotherapy
The Sun
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
I prepared myself to die and I'm poorer than ever says EastEnders' Samantha Womack as she reveals how cancer changed her
IN August 2022, after going off a 'gut feeling' while starring in a West End play and getting checked, Samantha Womack was diagnosed with breast cancer, aged 49. And the star - known to millions for playing Ronnie Mitchell in EastEnders - had a long road ahead, one where she didn't know what her end destination would be, and so, in a heartbreaking move, she prepared for the disease killing her. 7 'You obviously never want to lose your life, but cancer forces you to look into that cupboard,' Samantha told The Sun, continuing: 'I started preparing for that from the beginning, because you do realise you could be close to possibly having that final moment. "I started preparing for the 'what's going to happen if I've only got six months.' 'But actually, once you've looked in that cupboard, it's not as scary as you think, I felt like, 'OK, that cupboard is there, and I don't know when it's going to be fully open'.' The EastEnders star was told it was a Grade 3 invasive ductal carcinoma - one that tends to grow and spread more quickly than lower-grade cancers - and she'd neither found a lump, nor had a mammogram, but was instead guided by her intuition that something wasn't quite right. It was over the next gruelling few months that Samantha would undergo the arduous task of having chemotherapy, and undergoing a lumpectomy, to try and remove the cancer - a time which the star describes as 'frightening.' Samantha made her EastEnders debut on July 24, 2007, slipping into the skin of Ronnie Mitchell, a cousin of Walford tough man Phil. Less than a decade later, Ronnie and on-screen sister Roxy Mitchell - played by Rita Simons - were given the chop. She then moved into theatre, and it was one evening after a show that Samantha went for dinner with Grease superstar Oliva Newton-John, who battled breast cancer for three decades. Little did Samantha know at the time, but Olivia's tragic death from the disease in 2022 would spur her on to announce her own breast cancer to her large fan base. Sharing a picture of herself with the actress, who passed away at the age of 73, Samantha wrote: 'This was the most magical of evenings. Olivia and Chloe had come to see Grease in London and we had dinner together afterwards. I was so excited and in awe, she was my childhood.' Sam added: 'I now start my own battle with this disease and am left feeling deeply moved.' EastEnders' Samantha Womack reveals she broke down in tears as she returned to stage after breast cancer surgery Samantha had gone to get checked while working, and she quickly got a diagnosis of a gremlin shadow, eventually diagnosed as breast cancer. 'If I hadn't gone to follow that instinct at that time, my life, well, I don't even know if I could have my life now. That's the reality,' she tells us. Samantha continued: 'My diagnosis and my treatment would have just been so, so much harder, because it had already started to travel to my lymph nodes. Early diagnosis is absolutely life changing.' Then came the next challenge of breaking the news to her family. The star spoke about how she told them, including her two children Benjamin and Lili-Rose, saying her initial response was to 'protect' her kids from the news. What are the signs of breast cancer? BREAST cancer is the most common type of cancer in the UK. The majority of women who get it are over 50, but younger women and, in rare cases, men can also get breast cancer. If it's treated early enough, breast cancer can be prevented from spreading to other parts of the body. Breast cancer can have a number of symptoms, but the first noticeable symptom is usually a lump or area of thickened breast tissue. Most breast lumps aren't cancerous, but it's always best to have them checked by your doctor. You should also speak to your GP if you notice any of the following: a change in the size or shape of one or both breasts discharge from either of your nipples (which may be streaked with blood) a lump or swelling in either of your armpits dimpling on the skin of your breasts a rash on or around your nipple a change in the appearance of your nipple, such as becoming sunken into your breast Source: NHS 'I think it's a very female thing to do, and you want to be like a 'good cancer girl,' Samantha added. Currently, the star lives in Spain after making the move there with her Emmerdale star partner, Oliver Farnworth. Samantha continued: 'Ollie, my partner, is very gentle, so he doesn't force any kind of conversation or whatever. I mean, his way of taking care of it was just constantly coming in and trying to make nice things to eat and we'd go for a walk up the mountain every day, which was really hard after chemo, but then every day you go a little bit further, and a little bit further. 'I was just so lucky to have that experience. I think I would really struggle in a city. A lot of the women that I speak to who now go on retreats after cancer or during cancer treatment say being around nature feels very healing.' Over the next few months, the brave star underwent treatment, and she described to us what that was like, grimacing while recalling 'red devil chemo' which is given that name due to its bright red appearance. Recalling that time of her life, Samantha said: 'Interestingly, the radiotherapy, I was OK with. I didn't react too badly to that. The chemotherapy that I had, I found frightening, but mainly because I was dovetailing between private healthcare. 'I wasn't insured. I cancelled my insurance during Covid. I knew I had a high grade three cancer, which means it was aggressive. So I had some savings, not a lot, but I just knew that the most important thing was to get it out ASAP, which actually I'm really glad I did because it had started to go to the lymph nodes. 'Then I went back to the NHS because they're brilliant at cancer care, and I was treated at the Royal Marsden. But, I think for me I was the most scared then because I didn't know what was coming. 'I feared the feeling of being out of control, and red devil chemo in particular felt really frightening because they needed to sign it off and two nurses needed to administer it because it's highly toxic. 'And when you watch that colour come out of a box and see two women with masks putting it in, it does feel really frightening. 'Some people decide to go traditional with treatment, some people don't. The point is that you have as much information as you can, because then you get to tailor your treatment and your whole experience of cancer, which honestly now I wouldn't change. I wouldn't change it because I'm calmer and, I think, slightly more connected to myself than I ever have been before.' After around six months, Samantha was told she was cancer-free - a term the star says she finds 'strange.' 'I'll say I'm cancer-free as of right now, but I also know that, statistically, if you've had cancer there's probably a slightly greater risk that you'll get it again compared to somebody that hasn't had it,' she said. And cancer most definitely changed the star's outlook in so many different ways. Samantha tells us she's become more pragmatic, won't suffer fools, and is trusting and listening to herself a lot more than she once did. I feared the feeling of being out of control, and red devil chemo in particular felt really frightening Samantha Womack She said: 'I've definitely changed as a human. If I feel like I need a break, or feel like I need a check up, or if I'm actually really not comfortable with a job or I'm uncomfortable with a group of people, I just trust my voice in my head so much more than I ever did. 'If I feel like something is wrong, not just health-wise, just anything, if I feel like something's not a good fit for me, I'm far more confident now to be able to say, 'Do you know what? I just don't think this is for me. And that's because my perception has shifted.' Samantha's shift in perception has also altered the way she views her finances, with the star admitting to having 'far less money than she ever had,' but for good reason. She explained: 'My biggest paranoia and, not even paranoia, my biggest anxiety was about financial stability because I didn't have it growing up. I had a precarious start in life and I craved that financial security that would keep me physically safe. 'I'd be in a house, and I'd control my environment. And I think work became attached to that for me, it became about financial security. and I think what's happened since the diagnosis is I'm in no better position financially than I was. I'm still a jobbing actor. I still, if I've got paid for one good job, it could be up to a year before I want to take another job or get offered another job. 'So I'm actually turning down more work now than I ever have, and I have far less money than I've ever had, but it's a weird thing for me because normally, as my bank balances disappears, that anxiety would normally keep me awake at night, and I still worry about it, but it doesn't take over my entire body because I know I'm safe. 'I'm safe because I have me, I have my brain, I have my body, and I have my health. Don't be distracted with all the other kinds of sparkly bits of life. If you've got a concern, if you've got any niggling worries, there are places you can go to get checked.' On the topic of getting checked, Samantha is trying to educate women about the importance of knowing their breast density, for a Genesis Care campaign named 'Keep Abreast of your Breast Density.' While mammograms are a great screening tool for many women, for those with dense breasts it is harder to spot anything out of the ordinary, and cancer can be missed. Dense breast tissue is found in approximately half of women who are aged forty or above and worryingly, women with extremely dense breasts are six times more likely to get breast cancer than those with fatty breasts. Discussing her mission to educate, Samantha explained: 'We often think of breast cancer as something that happens to women after menopause, and that's dictated by the NHS calling us in for mammograms after the age of 50. 'But obviously we know now that cancer is now far more prevalent in all ages and breast cancer numbers are through the roof. What I love about the campaign is, as I've understood through my own journey, information is power.' She praised the younger women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer for speaking out on social media, from Jessie J to EastEnders star Kara Tointon. 'Genesis Care is doing this amazing thing, where they are informing women about what dense breasts are following their mammogram, which I'd never heard of. I did loads of reading, loads of treatments, but no one had ever told me to test my breast density. And the statistics are really important. If you're D category and extremely dense, you're six times more likely to get cancer. 'To get checked is probably the same price as you taking your car for an MOT, or a weekend away or, you know, and even if you're low income, you could save up for a year and hopefully try and get enough.' GenesisCare has also launched a new screening service where patients who have dense breast tissue can benefit from a rapid breast MRI scan for early detection of cancer. These scans, which aren't widely available as standard screening unless you have a very high risk of breast cancer, are now available privately at GenesisCare centres in Oxford and Windsor. 7 7 7 7
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
Anti-vaxxer mother hits back at claims she caused daughter's death
An anti-vaxxer mother has hit back at claims she caused her daughter's death from cancer. Paloma Shemirani died last year at the age of 23 after refusing chemotherapy, despite having been told by doctors she had a high chance of survival if she accepted the treatment. Her brothers Gabriel and Sebastian Shemirani blame their sister's death on the anti-medicine views of their mother, Kate Shemirani, for which she was struck off the nursing register in 2021. They said previously: 'My sister has passed away as a direct consequence of my mum's actions and beliefs and I don't want anyone else to go through the same pain or loss that I have.' But Mrs Shemirani has denied responsibility and insisted her daughter was never formally diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In a statement issued with Dr Faramarz Shemirani, her husband, she said: 'This is state-sponsored propaganda designed to silence the truth of what happened to our daughter and reframe a preventable death as parental misconduct – despite overwhelming legal, medical and forensic documentation to the contrary.' She added: 'Paloma was never 'coerced'. She was never 'radicalised'. She was a woman of conviction and clarity.' Ms Shemirani began to have chest pains and breathing difficulties not long after graduating in 2023. She and Ander Harris, her then-boyfriend, went to Maidstone Hospital, Kent, where doctors diagnosed her with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Medics told her she had an 80 per cent chance of recovering from the cancer, which can kill if left untreated, if she undertook chemotherapy. Mrs Shemirani texted her daughter's boyfriend to say he should tell her to refuse chemotherapy or any treatment, according to the BBC. Mrs Shemirani was an NHS nurse in the 1980s and calls herself 'the Natural Nurse' on social media. She rose to online prominence during the pandemic, where she claimed Covid was a hoax and that vaccines were part of a plan to kill many people. In some posts, she claimed treating cancer with chemotherapy was 'ill-informed' and akin to pouring mustard gas into people's veins. She sells apricot kernels for their 'potential health benefits' along with nutritional supplements, and offers information and advice on her website. She charges around £70 for an annual membership to her site, while patients – including those with cancer – pay £195 for a consultation and personalised 12-week programme. An inquest into Ms Shemirani's death will begin next month.
Mail & Guardian
3 days ago
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
‘It's heartbreaking': bad cancer drugs shipped to more than 100 countries
The burden of cancer is growing, particularly in low- and middle-income regions. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, instances of cancer have doubled in the last 30 years. (File photo) Vital chemotherapy drugs used around the world have failed quality tests, leaving cancer patients in more than 100 countries at risk of ineffective treatments and potentially fatal side effects, The drugs in question form the backbone of treatment plans for numerous common cancers — including breast, ovarian and leukemia. Some drugs contained so little of their key ingredient that pharmacists said giving them to patients would be as good as doing nothing. Other drugs, containing too much active ingredient, put patients at risk of severe organ damage or even death. 'Both scenarios are horrendous,' said one pharmacist. 'It's heartbreaking.' Doctors from multiple countries told TBIJ of the drugs in question not working as expected, leaving patients suddenly unresponsive to treatment. Other patients suffered side effects so toxic that they could no longer tolerate the medicine. The variance found in the levels of active ingredient was alarming. In some cases, pills from the same blister pack contained different amounts. These findings expose huge holes in the global safety nets intended to prevent profit-seeking manufacturers from cutting corners and to protect patients from bad drugs. All the while, patients and governments with stretched resources are paying the price for drugs that don't work. A global killer Cancer is one of the biggest killers worldwide, linked to around 10 million deaths every year — roughly one in six. The burden of cancer is growing, particularly in low- and middle-income regions. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, instances of cancer have doubled in the last 30 years. Much of the global demand for treatment is met by so-called generic drugs. These are versions of a drug that can be made once the original maker's exclusivity rights have expired and are typically made far more cheaply. The bad drugs described in this investigation were all generics. Generics are widely used in all countries but are most crucial in those with fewer resources, where costlier treatments might be beyond reach. If generics were not available in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, 'any cancer treatment would be likely inaccessible to most of the population', said Claudia Martinez of the Access to Medicine Foundation*, an NGO. In chemotherapy drugs, the active ingredient — which fights cancer cells — is also highly toxic. Patients need to receive enough of it to treat the cancer but not so much that they overdose and suffer damaging side effects. As such, hospital pharmacists calculate doses carefully and, in doing so, rely on the amount of active ingredient being exactly what's stated on the label. Research from a Working with collaborators in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi, researchers at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana in the US, analysed drug samples from the four countries. Of 189 samples that had not expired at the time of testing, about one fifth failed. This consisted of 20 different brands of generic drugs made by 17 manufacturers (see a full list of the brands that failed 'We were all taken aback when we saw the results,' said Marya Lieberman, the professor who led the research. More than 30 manufacturers made products to a good standard. But for patients receiving the poor-quality drugs, the effects could be devastating. 'Once a person has been diagnosed with cancer, there's a limited window of opportunity for treatment to work,' said Lieberman. 'And if someone is treated with an ineffective product, they can lose that precious window.' The majority of failed drugs had too little active ingredient (for most this meant less than 88% of the amount stated on the label) while some contained too much (more than 112%). Both thresholds were decided by researchers based on international standards. 'Both scenarios are horrendous in my eyes,' said Shereen Nabhani-Gebara, vice chair of the British Oncology Pharmacists Association. 'It takes a lot of courage for someone with cancer to accept a diagnosis, but then to be short-changed like this when they are trying their best is heartbreaking — because this is someone's life.' Tracking the threat Over the past six years, these brands of drugs have been shipped to more than 100 countries in every populated continent on the planet. They range from low- and middle-income nations like Nepal, Ethiopia and North Korea, to wealthy countries such as the US, UK and Saudi Arabia. The worst-performing drug in the study is made by Indian manufacturer Venus Remedies. It is a drug called cyclophosphamide, which is often used to treat cancers including lymphoma and breast cancer. All eight samples of this Venus Remedies drug failed, with six containing less than half the amount of active ingredient claimed by the manufacturer. One contained just over a quarter of the stated dose, which according to several cancer pharmacists would be as effective as no treatment at all. The drug has been shipped to six countries, with its largest importer being Ethiopia. Wondemagegnhu Tigeneh, a clinical oncologist in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, told TBIJ that he has treated patients with chemotherapy drugs he believes did not work. 'I have a suspicion that the active ingredient was lower than expected,' he said, remembering a drug he gave to a recent patient who had responded well to the first three rounds of treatment. But on the next round, their progress suddenly stopped. Because he has no means to test them, Tigeneh can never be sure of the quality of a given drug. But in his 20 years treating cancer, he has learned to notice tell-tale signs. Sometimes, for instance, there is a complete absence of side-effects such as nausea or hair loss. 'That makes it difficult to trust that particular drug,' he said. Then there are the patients whose disease he struggles to get under control, such as a patient whose response to treatment halted without warning. Rather than reducing the size of the tumour enough to enable surgery, his team has been forced to move onto a second-line treatment. If that fails, the next stage is palliative care. 'It's very sad,' said Tigeneh. 'We didn't used to see things like this.' Cancer patients in Ethiopia have far better access to treatment facilities now than they did 20 years ago. It doesn't seem, however, that the standard of medicines has kept pace. A 2020 study of cancer drugs in Ethiopia included 20 samples of cisplatin which were all found to be substandard, averaging just over half of the stated content. One researcher who tests the quality of drugs in the country told TBIJ that they find bad medicines wherever they go. Venus Remedies told TBIJ that the study results were 'not scientifically plausible' given the company's 'validated manufacturing systems and quality controls'. It said it has received no complaints or concerns about the batches in question and shared the results of its own testing that indicated they were of a good standard. It said storage conditions in the supply chain, which can affect drug quality, might have affected the researchers' test results. However, the absence of similar quality issues across the entire data set suggests this is not the case. Venus Remedies is one of three companies or regulators that queried the methodology used by the lab, saying it deviated from international standards or could give erroneous results. However, Lieberman said that, although her results are not intended for regulatory purposes, her researchers' methods are based on those used by regulatory labs and were verified for suitability, accuracy, and precision. Both the findings and methods have been scrutinised by independent academics. Toxic effects About 3 200km south of Addis Ababa, in Malawi, specialist cancer care has only been available for around 15 years. In one of the poorest countries in the world, patients depend on healthcare being free at the point of need. That means clinics have to rely on generic drugs. A pharmacist specialising in cancer care in central Malawi told TBIJ of seeing patients at his hospital overdose on methotrexate, a drug used to treat leukaemia and lymphoma. Malawi has also imported two of the brands of methotrexate the researchers in this investigation found to contain too much active ingredient: Zuvitrex, made by Zuvius Lifesciences, and Unitrexate, made by United Biotech. Neither company responded to multiple requests for comment. This sort of excess can be just as harmful as a deficit. A bad overdose can leave a patient with lifelong side effects or even kill them. As Nabhani-Gebara said: 'More is not better.' The Malawian pharmacist said patients at his hospital have suffered severe vomiting and nausea after overdosing on methotrexate, while others had to be moved onto a second-line treatment, which might not be as effective. For some patients, the side effects were so severe that they had to pause treatment entirely — giving the cancer a chance to grow. When a sample of the methotrexate in question was tested as part of a research project taking place at the time, it was found to be too high in active ingredient. 'It's very worrying,' the pharmacist said. He told TBIJ that he and his colleagues have on occasion had to stop using an entire batch of chemotherapy medicine and send samples to the national drug regulator after the medicine changed colour — a sign something is wrong with it. 'We had patients scheduled for clinic,' he said, 'and then we had to break the news to them that we don't have medicines.' Failing safety nets Countries all over the world have systems in place to stop bad drugs reaching patients. However, there are huge disparities in their effectiveness. According to Chaitanya Kumar Koduri of the US Pharmacopeia, an organisation that sets standards for medicines in the US and internationally, '70% of countries cannot take care of their own medicine quality'. Most governments have a national regulator — but their remit and resources vary hugely. And even the better-funded regulators are far from foolproof. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for instance, is struggling to keep up with inspections of manufacturing plants domestically and in India and China, and has admitted that its inspections have not been a reliable indicator of drug quality. The FDA recently announced it would expand unannounced inspections at foreign manufacturing facilities, saying this would help expose those who falsify records or hide violations. It told TBIJ 'that inspections and reviews will continue to ensure [drug] safety and efficacy'. One of the countries where medicine regulation ranks the lowest, according to the WHO, is Nepal. It is also one of the biggest importers of the failed chemotherapy brands in this investigation. Despite there being more than 20 000 brands of medicine on the market there, the country's drugs regulator has set a target of testing just 22 drugs in the next 12 months — and none of them chemotherapy drugs. Narayan Prasad Dhakal, the regulator's director general, told TBIJ that its lab cannot currently test cancer drugs and admitted that the situation around quality-testing is 'a concern'. He also said that while his department has the power to recall cancer drugs based on external evidence, it has never done so. The issue is especially fraught for patients who may have travelled from remote, rural areas to get treatment that then may not even work. Laxmi Kumari, whose two-year-old son is being treated for cancer in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, has had to procure chemotherapy drugs from private pharmacies. The treatment has cost the family nearly two lakh rupees (R30 000), equivalent to several months' average salary in Nepal, and yet they have no reassurance that it will be effective. 'We have no way of knowing the quality of the medications being used in his treatment,' said Kumari. 'We rely entirely on what the doctors recommend.' 'Neither patients nor their families have any way of knowing the quality of these drugs,' said Smriti Pokharel of the Wish Nepal Foundation, which helps children from low-income families access cancer treatment. 'Even doctors face challenges in verifying their quality. No one seems willing to take responsibility for ensuring proper treatment for cancer patients.' Race to the bottom Generic drug manufacturers are operating in a global market that healthcare professionals and experts agree is driven by one thing: price. It's a market in which those operating under a less watchful eye can find ways to undercut their competitors. This could mean scrimping on the amount or quality of the active ingredient — the most expensive component — or using cheap or outdated machinery. Research shows that the majority of substandard drugs occur due to problems with manufacturing, quality control, packaging or storage. The results can be fatal. Four children died in Colombia after being given contaminated cancer drugs in 2019. Three years later, another batch of bad medicine caused the deaths of at least 10 children in Yemen who were being treated for leukaemia. The price-driven market creates a dangerous dynamic in which the number of companies making a particular drug shrinks and shrinks until global supply is precariously dependent on just a handful of manufacturers. Should one company slip up, thousands of patients can be left without the drugs they depend on. It's a situation that played out in the US recently. Between 2018 and 2022, Intas Pharmaceuticals — the parent company of Accord Healthcare, which made the worst-performing cisplatin tested in this investigation — grew its market share of cisplatin from 24% to 62%. It also increased its share in methotrexate fivefold in the same time period. All the while, prices of both these chemotherapy drugs dropped. Then, at the end of 2022, a surprise inspection by the US drug regulator revealed a 'cascade of failure' at an Intas factory in India, where staff were seen shredding and pouring acid on quality records. The shutdown that ensued sent shockwaves across the US, with nearly every major cancer centre reporting shortfalls in chemotherapy drugs during 2023, Accord Healthcare said the batch of cisplatin that failed our testing had met all established quality standards, and shared data from internal and external studies indicating its quality. It said it has not received any market concerns related to this batch. In India, the world's largest producer of generic drugs, questions have been raised over whether manufacturers are properly punished for producing drugs that aren't fit for purpose — and whether foreign regulators have proper oversight. 'The Indian government's interest is in trying to protect the industry,' said public health activist and former Big Pharma whistleblower Dinesh Thakur. Sixteen of the 17 manufacturers identified in this investigation are based in India and five have been previously flagged by a regulator for producing substandard batches of drugs. One of them, Zee Laboratories, has been flagged 46 times since 2018. India's drug regulator told TBIJ that Zee Laboratories has been audited and given a 'stop production order', which was lifted after the company resolved the problems in question. It did not give details about when this was, which issues it pertained to or whether the company faced any consequences. It's also unclear whether the manufacturers exposed in TBIJ's previous investigation into substandard asparaginase have faced any repercussions, despite 70 000 children with leukemia being at risk. Three of those companies — Getwell Pharmaceuticals, United Biotech and VHB Medi Sciences — also made some of the substandard drugs revealed by this investigation. Thakur said there's only one way to explain the production of weak drugs by big companies: 'Somebody's cutting corners.' Meanwhile, these medicines continue to fill pharmacy shelves. Zuvius Lifesciences and GLS Pharma have supplied their failed brands to over 40 countries. And in the past two years, Venus Remedies — which made the drug that pharmacists said wasn't worth prescribing — has been awarded a series of contracts and licences, including from the Pan American Health Organization to supply several essential cancer drugs to Latin American countries. India's drug regulator defended the oversight system, saying that failing drugs are recalled and manufacturers face 'either administrative penalties or legal prosecution in court'. Getwell Pharmaceuticals, GLS Pharma, VHB Medi Sciences and Zee Laboratories did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Shortage of resources In order to ensure that people across the world have access to safe, effective drugs, the WHO has put in place a series of steps. It has compiled a list of 'essential medicines', to help countries with limited resources know what to prioritise. It checks certain drugs, active ingredients and their manufacturers to create a pre-approved list that countries can trust. The WHO also oversees a set of standards for manufacturers and drugs that many countries refer to when importing medicines. However, these measures have their own limitations. The list of recommended medicines, for example, only expanded to include cancer drugs in 2019 and experts say WHO should include more of them on the list. Shalini Jayasekar-Zürn of the Union for International Cancer Control, a global membership organisation dedicated to taking action on cancer, says it currently only encompasses two cancer drugs, rituximab and trastuzumab. 'It would be great if the list was expanded to include more essential medicines, especially for cancer,' she said. While the WHO oversees standards for manufacturers and drugs, it's up to the countries buying medicines to make sure those standards are met — which is no easy task given the resources of national regulators. Meanwhile, Thakur said that one WHO scheme — a certificate system that says a given drug meets various standards — has been undermined by companies that have found 'workarounds' to get hold of the paperwork without improving quality. 'It's not worth the paper it's written on,' he said. The upshot, experts say, is that without the comprehensive oversight seen in countries like the UK, the WHO's processes don't stop substandard medicines making their way onto shelves. Reflecting on TBIJ's findings alongside his own experience, Thakur said that the WHO was 'clearly not' delivering on its stated purpose: to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable. The WHO did not respond to several requests for comment made by TBIJ. A high price The cruel irony is that in this race to the bottom, it is the cancer patients who are often left to foot the bill. And those who have the least pay the most. In low income countries, the cost of 58% of essential cancer medicines is paid by patients, compared with 1.8% in upper-middle-income countries. One cancer pharmacist in Ethiopia estimated that it could take over a year for a patient to save for cancer treatment. If that medicine then turns out to be faulty, they simply might not be able to afford to pay for another. 'Most people believe cancer is incurable,' they said. 'When they end up with a medicine that won't cure them, that's another tragedy.' 'For me, it's a question of fairness,' said Lieberman, the lead researcher. '[Patients] have the right to be treated with a medicine that actually is what it says it is. One that has the correct ingredients in it, that hasn't degraded, and that doesn't have things in it that will hurt them. It's too important.' * The Access to Medicine Foundation is part-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of TBIJ's funders. India, where about 20% of the world's generic drugs come from, plays a pivotal role in ensuring people everywhere can access affordable medicine. Sixteen of the 17 manufacturers of failed drugs in this investigation are based in India. While the majority of India-made drugs are safe, the country's generics industry has long been dogged by scandal. In 2013, Indian manufacturer Ranbaxy agreed to pay a fine of $500 million after its US subsidiary pleaded guilty to the improper manufacturing, storing and testing of drugs. In 2022 and 2023, Indian-made cough syrups were linked to the deaths of children in Gambia, Cameroon and Uzbekistan. And as recently as August 2024, it was reported that the regulator had found more than 50 drugs on the market to be substandard or fake, including some paracetamol and antacids.
Wall Street Journal
4 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
AstraZeneca's Datroway Approved to Treat Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer in U.S.
AstraZeneca's AZN 0.27%increase; green up pointing triangle Datroway drug has been approved in the U.S. to treat adult patients with non-small cell lung cancer. The British pharmaceutical company said Tuesday that the drug has been approved for patients who have already received chemotherapy.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
Breakthrough cancer test ‘predicts whether chemotherapy will work'
A breakthrough test can successfully predict whether chemotherapy will work so patients can avoid needless side effects. The test, developed by Cambridge University, looks at the structure of tumour DNA and forecasts whether it will resist treatment. It was piloted using data from 840 patients with different types of cancer and found that it could help spot whether treatment was likely to fail for ovarian, prostate and breast cancers. James Brenton, professor of ovarian cancer medicine at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, said: 'Sadly, there are too many cases where cancer is resistant to chemotherapy treatment – meaning unpleasant side effects for the patient with limited benefit to them. 'Chemotherapy is a mainstay of cancer treatment and saves many lives. Yet in many cases, it has been administered the same way for over 40 years. 'By understanding who is most likely to respond to it, chemotherapy could become a more tailored treatment across different types of cancer.' The test can accurately predict resistance to treatment of three common types of chemotherapy – platinum-based, anthracycline and taxane chemotherapy – which are given to nearly 100,000 patients in Britain each year. Although such treatments can help keep cancer at bay, they are also toxic to healthy cells and can lead to unpleasant side effects, such as fatigue, a weakened immune system, nausea and hair loss. Experts hope that tests will be used after diagnosis to classify patients as either 'chemotherapy resistant' or 'chemotherapy sensitive' to treatments, to avoid giving patients therapies that will not work. Dr Iain Foulkes, executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK, which helped fund the research, said: 'The days of chemotherapy being offered as a 'one-size-fits-all' treatment are ending. 'Thanks to this research, we are moving towards a future where personalised cancer treatment is an option for many patients. 'Only by delivering more optimised, successful treatment will more people live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.' Researchers are now working with the pharmaceutical industry to develop the test and will be applying to regulators for its use in the clinic. The scientists are also developing further tests for other targeted cancer drugs to find out how widely the technology could be used across different cancer types. Dr Ania Piskorz, co-lead author and head of genomics at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, said: 'It was important to us to create a test that could be easily adopted in the clinic, using material we already collect during diagnosis and well-established genomic sequencing methods. 'The test is based on the full DNA sequence that we get from these methods, and we can adapt it to work alongside other genomic sequencing methods that are commonly used to personalise treatment for cancer.'
