THE 10-year-old cancer victim refused treatment by a health authority
was responding well yesterday to a course of chemotherapy paid for by an
anonymous donor.
Child B was thrown into the centre of a legal battle when Cambridge
Health Authority decided not to fund her #75,000 treatment for leukemia.
Last Friday the Court of Appeal upheld a judge's ruling that the
health authority was legally justified in refusing to pay for the
treatment.
But then an anonymous benefactor offered to put up the cash -- and
yesterday the girl started a five-day course of intensive chemotherapy
at the private Portland Hospital for Women and Children in London.
The blood specialist in charge of her treatment said she was bearing
up well to the powerful drugs being drip-fed into her.
Consultant haemotologist Dr Peter Gravett, speaking at a news
conference at the London Clinic which will share the girl's treatment,
said: ''So far there haven't been any adverse effects at all. It hasn't
even affected her appetite.
''Chemotherapy is a very individual thing and some people are more
sensitive to it than others.''
Earlier, he had warned that the girl could feel very sick from the
drugs, which are being administered for about six hours a day. Mouth
ulcers, diarrhoea and hair loss were likely side effects.
Three weeks after the end of the treatment, doctors will assess how
well the girl's bone marrow has responded.
A decision will then be taken on whether she is well enough to go to
the next stage of treatment -- a bone marrow transplant.
Alternatively, doctors may decide to give her more chemotherapy -- or
to cease her treatment if it appears to be having no positive effect.
Dr Gravett said the girl's nine-year-old sister would be the ideal
marrow donor. She was the donor in an earlier transplant operation
before Child B suffered the relapse.
Dr Gravett says the girl's chances of survival remained at 10%, but
added: ''I have no reason to think that the prospects are any more
gloomy than they have been over the past few days.''
The girl developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of five and was
sent to Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, where she received
chemotherapy.
By August 1992 she appeared to have made a full recovery but 15 months
later she was diagnosed as suffering from acute myeloid leukemia and was
transferred to the Royal Marsden Hospital, west London, for her first
bone marrow transplant.
She left hospital last year and returned to school, but had a relapse
in mid-January and was given just six to eight weeks to live.
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