MS patient faces health 'lottery'

Glenys Jones is one of the few who receive Beta Interferon

An exiled family cannot return to Wales because of the lottery which surrounds the prescribing of life-enhancing drugs.

Bob Pugh from Richmond, London, suffers from MS but the expensive drug Beta Interferon mitigates the effects of this crippling illness.

He and his wife Wendy want to return to Wales but are unable to do so at present because of the restrictions on the use of the drug.

Postcode lottery

Mr Pugh and 3,000 other MS sufferers in Wales await the imminent government announcement on the controversial drug.

BBC Wales' current affairs programme Taro Naw has investigated the current postcode lottery for the sufferers of the disease.

Kelly Jones, 12, has to look after her mother Glenys

Leading Welsh Neurologist Dr Gareth Llywelyn from the the Royal Gwent Hospital claims that Britain is falling behind in the race to find new drugs because of the current restrictions on known drugs being made available on the NHS.

But Plaid Cymru MP/AM Dafydd Wigley believes that regardless of the content of the expected anouncement by the Government's Advisory Body (N.I.C.E.), the Welsh Assembly should pursue its own policy in Wales.

This would allod Beta Interferon to be made available to the Welsh sufferers of MS at a cost of £3.6m a year.

Programme presenter Sian Sutton spoke to many sufferers of the disease who would benefit from the drug.

She also met a 12-year-old girl whose life has been changed by the care she provides for her mother who suffers from the crippling disease.

Glenys Jones of Coedpoeth, near Wrexham, is one of only 36 people throughout Wales who receives the drug that has made life easier for her and her daughter Kelly.

Taro Naw, S4C, 9.00pm Monday, 16 November