Giles Turner was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer in 2023 and immediately faced a choice that shouldn't exist: pay £250 a month out of pocket for abiraterone, or go without. He lived in England. Just across the border in Scotland and Wales, the same drug had been available on the NHS since 2023. Turner felt the injustice sharply enough to fight it. Now, after his campaign alongside Prostate Cancer UK, abiraterone will be offered free to thousands of men in England within weeks.
The drug works by starving cancer of the hormones it needs to grow. A major trial called STAMPEDE, published in 2022, found that two years of abiraterone halved the risk of prostate cancer returning and reduced the risk of death by 40 percent. Those aren't small margins. For men diagnosed with high-risk prostate cancer that hasn't yet spread, this changes the odds significantly.
Prostate Cancer UK estimates that 7,000 men a year will now start the treatment. The charity projects 1,470 will avoid the news that their cancer has worsened, and 560 lives will be saved annually. Around 2,000 men diagnosed in the last three months are already eligible if clinically suitable—they'll have access within weeks.
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Start Your News DetoxWhat took so long in England? The regulatory path is part of it. Once abiraterone went off patent in 2022, pharmaceutical companies had little financial incentive to push for broader approval through NICE and the MHRA, the health watchdog and medical regulator. Scotland and Wales found ways to work within existing protocols to make it available. England didn't—until the evidence and the pressure from patients like Turner became impossible to ignore.
NHS England says the expansion is possible because of savings achieved on other medicines, freeing up budget for this one. It's a reminder that access to life-saving treatment often isn't just about whether something works. It's about bureaucracy, geography, and whether someone is willing to fight.
Turner calls it a "wonderful" and "life-saving victory." Prostate Cancer UK is now pushing the same case in Northern Ireland, where men still don't have routine access. The logic that worked in Scotland, Wales, and now England should work there too.
