Nearly 2000 people have signed the petition proposed by a patient to request reimbursement for a treatment: radium 223 dichloride. Injected into patients suffering from metastasized cancer of the prostate, this product increases the lifespan but it is still not reimbursed in France because the health authorities consider it not useful enough, unlike the experts.
A former rugby player, father in the Tours region, Thierry Marteau, suffers from metastasized prostate cancer but cannot be treated with an innovative product, radium 223, which is not reimbursed in France.
Each year in France, around 9,000 men die from metastasized prostate cancer. It is a disease affecting mainly, but not always, older men.
According to studies and the best experts, radium 223 dichloride, marketed in France under the name Xofigo®, is very useful in metastasized prostate cancer. It has had a European marketing authorization since 2013, but it is still not reimbursed in France, despite its solid scientific record.
Like a bottle in the sea
This is a treatment administered as an injection, and to do up to six times maximum. The problem is that it is not reimbursed and is very expensive. Between 4000 and 5000 € the injection, or 30,000 Euros for the treatment. Thousands of patients cannot therefore have access to it, while lives are at stake. A phenomenon of non-reimbursement of drugs that have a marketing authorization that we observe more and more in France.
For this reason, several leading physicians specializing in human cancers, including professors Christophe Hennequin and Stéphane Culine (Saint-Louis Hospital, Paris) or Karim Fizazi (Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif), and patient associations ( APCLP-CERHOM) had sent a solemn letter to the Minister of Health in December 2017 to stop “being taken for a ride” by the administration. This is dragging on to grant reimbursement and thus allow access to treatment to patients who deserve it in France.
Thierry Marteau’s petition is part of this process, a text launched at the beginning of January “like a bottle in the sea” one evening when he was “eaten up by the feeling of injustice and by anger”, according to what he said. told our colleagues to The New Republic.
Treatment accessible elsewhere in Europe
Authorized on the European market since 2013, radium 223 dichloride is still virtually inaccessible in France.
By way of comparison, it has been prescribed only 64 times in France, against more than 3,000 times in Germany.
As it is not reimbursed, doctors cannot prescribe it externally except to have the patient pay for it. If this is the case during hospitalization, it is often the administration of the hospital that blocks it. Because it would then be up to the hospital to pay out of its budgetary envelope for the treatment, but it cannot bear this type of cost in a period of budgetary austerity.
In addition, radium 223 dichloride is not a cure. Effective on patients with advanced stage prostate cancer, it saves time, significantly lengthens survival and improves quality of life by reducing pain.
The Ministry of Health already alerted
More than a year ago, under the government of François Hollande, a doctor had already tried to make things happen. Pierre-Luc Étienne, oncologist in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d’Armor), had helped one of his patients to contact the government and health authorities. This patient in question was already highlighting his bone pain, which could be alleviated with radium-223 dichloride. But his letters remained unanswered.
Doctor Pierre-Luc Étienne also deplores the responsibility of laboratories, which set prices well above production costs. And this, at the risk of the health of the sick.
For sign the petition, please click here.
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