'More flexibility' for blood disorder drugs

The Hospital Authority should be more flexible with the special drugs on its drug list, a thalassaemia patients' group urged yesterday.

Prescription guidelines allow patients to have special drugs only when they develop severe side effects from general drugs, Thalassaemia Association vice-chairwoman Sandy Wong Hang-yue said.

Dr Ha Shau-yin, of the Children's Thalassaemia Foundation, said budget constraints had stopped doctors from prescribing a new drug that might work better.

There are 378 patients with the blood disorder in Hong Kong. They need transfusions every month, but this can cause heart and liver failure. Most are given Desferal, a kind of iron-removing drug, through a pump for at least 10 hours, five or six times a week. Another drug - Ferriprox, taken orally - might lower immunity.

Ha said more patients should be given Deferasirox, which claims fewer side effects. Up to September, only 12 had been prescribed the drug.

Wong said most families could not afford Deferasirox, at HK$20,000 a month, five times more than Desferal and Ferriprox. It had been provided free as the first-choice drug in many countries, including Canada.