A GORLESTON cancer patient faces an agonising month long wait to learn whether new life-extending cancer drugs will be available to him through the NHS.

A GORLESTON cancer patient faces an agonising month long wait to learn whether new life-extending cancer drugs will be available to him through the NHS.

David Basey, 70, and his wife Ann confronted the group which makes drugs decisions for the NHS to ask why it has taken so long to make up its mind on four life-extending drugs for advanced kidney cancer.

Mr and Mrs Basey went to the public question time held by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the independent body which provides national health guidance.

Mr Basey, a retired bricklayer and electricity board worker, was diagnosed last February and was given one to two years to live. He has had his kidney removed but the cancer has spread to his spine. His only hope is one of the latest cancer drugs, Sutent, which could double his life expectancy and his time with his wife Ann, to whom he has been married less than a year.

But the drug is not recommended for use on the NHS apart from exceptional cases. Nice is reviewing its guidance and met to make a decision last week, but will not publish it until late March. Until then, Mr Basey has decided to spend his life savings on the �3,000-a-month drugs in the hope that the NHS will pay for them before his money runs out.

Nice has been looking at Sutent, Nexavar, Torisel and Avastin since 2007. It is due to publish its guidance, or final appraisal determination (FAD), in late February, followed by a 28-day chance to appeal, so if there is no appeal it will become official in March.

Mr Basey said: “Sutent might double my lifespan. We can afford to pay for it until June and I hope by then the guidance will have changed. I hope something in medicine will come along in the time I have got left. That is my only hope.”