Cancer Patients Left Without Therapy Again: The Oncology Clinic Apologises and Blames Distribution

The University Clinic of Radiotherapy and Oncology has once again run short of the drug Zoladex, and some patients left without receiving their therapy. The clinic's director explains that the distributor is delivering the drug in small quantities and expects it to be available from Monday.

At the same time, a second delay happened. Patients who were due to receive Phesgo, a therapy used for certain forms of HER2-positive breast cancer, were sent back because the drug wasn't delivered on time. The clinic issued a public apology. "We want to clarify that the delay is the result of problems in the distribution and delivery of the drug, which are outside the clinic's direct control," the statement says.

The statement on Phesgo doesn't say how many patients are affected, when the drug will arrive or when regular therapy will resume. That's no small thing. For cancer patients, regularity isn't an administrative matter, it's part of the treatment itself, which the clinic admits when it writes that it is aware of "how important timely and continuous therapy is."

"Outside our direct control" is a phrase that sounds reasonable until you ask whose control it is, then. Procuring and distributing medicines isn't bad weather. Someone signed the contracts, someone tracks the deliveries, and someone ought to know the drug won't arrive before the patient shows up for therapy.

The shortage comes just as the Ministry of Health announces that cancer care has been put on the table at the highest level for the first time, at a Government meeting held at the initiative of the patients' association Hema-Onko. The minister says there has been improvement in securing therapy, but admits weaknesses in other areas, such as radiotherapy, whose availability, according to him, is about three times lower than the European average.

Decentralising cancer therapy has been announced by several ministers for years, and there's still no firm date. Until then, the patients keep getting one explanation: the problem is distribution. How many times does that explanation have to be repeated before someone finally answers for it?