Watch the video above: Hamilton man wants cancer drug that’s not covered. Crystal Goomansingh reports.
TORONTO – A Hamilton man is being forced to raise the money to pay for his cancer treatments because the drug that he says could help him isn’t covered by OHIP.
Frank Italiano was diagnosed with B Cell Lymphoma in 2008. Doctors found an eight centimetre tumour within his intestines on his left side.
He did chemotherapy until 2012 and lost about 50 pounds, he said.
Now, he’s putting all his effort into getting a new drug he hopes will shrink his tumour. The drug is Adcetris and has been used with some success to fight similar cancers.
Vincenzo Benenati of Edmonton used Adcetris to fight his lymphoma. He used the drug from Dec. 2012 to March 2013. During that time, he was in remission. But the cancer came back when he stopped using it.
“It was a blessing because it bought me sometime and there was another treatment that came out that I was able to do,” he said in a telephone interview Tuesday, adding he’s been in remission since Oct. 2012.
But the drug is expensive; approximately $15,000 every three weeks for Italiano. The amount of the drug that a person needs is based on their body weight. Italiano needs just over two vials for each treatment and each vial is $5,000.
“We had some friends and a little bit of savings we had. Some friends chipped in and put enough for another round,” Italiano said. “Hopefully in the end we make it, but I don’t want to leave the family broke either.”
Benenati understands the pressure that’s on Italiano.
“I didn’t want to put my family in bankruptcy to try and gain access to a drug that was showing 75 per cent success rate in relapsed patients. So it was tough,” he said.
Italiano is being forced to pay for the drug himself because OHIP doesn’t pay for the drug despite it being used for other cancers.
Italiano is in a similar situation to that of Kimm Fletcher, a Milton woman, who was requesting the Ontario government pay for her Avastin treatment. That drug, though paid for by OHIP in some cases, was not recommended for use for her type of brain cancer.
Ontario’s committee to evaluate drugs twice reviewed Avastin and concluded the drug “has not been proven to improve survival.”
– With files from Crystal Goomansingh
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