- Sarah Summers was diagnosed with breast cancer in May last year
- She underwent 18 weeks of chemotherapy and had began to recover
- However, in April doctors revealed it had returned and spread to her lungs
- Experts advised her to seek funding for Kadcyla – a life-extending drug
- But her local health board rejected her appeal and she died weeks later
A mother-of-three has died just weeks after being told her cancer wasn’t ‘exceptional enough’ for a life-prolonging drug.
Sarah Summers, 31, was diagnosed with breast cancer in May last year after finding a lump. She underwent 18 weeks of chemotherapy and had began to recover – but was told at the start of this year that she had a genetic mutation leaving her at high risk of further tumours.
In April, doctors confirmed the worst and revealed her cancer had returned and had even spread to her lungs. Experts advised her to seek funding for a drug called Kadcyla but her local health board rejected her appeal. Her health continued to deteriorate and she developed fluid on her lungs and pneumonia before losing her battle at the start of September.
Her husband Michael Poole, 31, from Treherbert in the Rhondda, said: ‘We were lost for words. Sarah’s oncologist herself could not understand how she was not judged to be clinically exceptional.
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Sarah Summers, 31, from Treherbert in the Rhondda, died just weeks after being denied funding for a life-saving breast cancer drug due to not being ‘exceptional enough’
Filed under: Cancer, Breast Cancer
