Tina McGeever petition

I thought you would welcome a post on the outcome of our discussion yesterday afternoon on Tina McGeever's access to cancer drugs petition (PE1108). As you know, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, was giving evidence to the committee on progress and action by the Scottish Government in taking forward the conclusions of our inquiry report.

This, I thought, was a really useful and helpful discussion with the Cab Sec in terms of getting clarity and details of what practical steps are being taken to improve the processes at a very local level for patients accessing cancer treatment drugs. The petition came forward on the back of the experience of Tina and her late husband Michael Gray.

It was encouraging yesterday to hear the steps being taken on a number of fronts such as improving local liaison between the health board, clinician and patient, more (and better quality) information for patients on exceptional prescribing to be renamed individual patient treatment requests).

We welcome and appreciate the work that has been done and will be continue to be done by the Scot Govt and we are pleased to have been able to assist in this. Of course we will continue to consider the petition but I think yesterday took us all a good way forward to bringing about the necessary improvements. That is what we are working together to achieve.

You can listen to Tina being interviewed after the meeting on Radio Scotland i-player (about 16m 40s in).

You can also watch the archive of yesterday discussion with the Cab Sec on Holyrood TV (this was the first petition on the agenda).

Frank McAveety MSP, Convener