Absolutely delighted with the NICE announcement today that advanced pancreatic cancer patients in England will be allowed access to the life-extending drug, Abraxane, on the NHS.

We added our voice to the need for Abraxane by campaigning for two years and 112,176 people signed up to the campaign https://www.change.org/p/don-t-stop-funding-only-drug-for-pancreatic-cancer because we all felt passionately that patients in England should have the same treatment options as those in Scotland, Wales and most of the rest of Europe.

On average Abraxane can extend a patient’s life by two months and when you consider how little time most pancreatic cancer patients have left upon diagnosis (merely months), this is significant. For us, two more months would have meant one more Christmas and one more birthday with Kevin.

There are very few treatment options for pancreatic cancer patients so this news today really is to be celebrated.

This is the second time this week that pancreatic cancer has hit the news. Surgeon Keith Roberts featured the pilot scheme in Birmingham which is cutting the average time to surgery for patients found early enough for that option. This too looks promising and we have to be encouraged by the steps we are seeing and hope that one day pancreatic cancer patients may have much better outcomes than currently #HopeIsContagious