Fellow Maltese citizen Sandro Grech is going through quite an ordeal right now after the service-provider that was planned to offer a cancer treatment (leukemia) to him has significantly increased the price of the treatment. In turn, an air ambulance service is now requesting an additional €80,000 to transport the Maltese citizen to a hospital in China for another treatment.
Following discussions with professionals familiar with the matter, I was told that the case of the Maltese man who is trying to obtain an experimental treatment for his cancer, seems to be a typical case of greedy companies and entities bumping up prices to helpless patients who have very few alternatives.
The treatment was originally supposed to be provided by the Singapore National University Health System. It involved an experimental CD7 CAR-T cell immunotherapy, in which a patient’s own T-cells are genetically modified to target and destroy cancerous T-cells. The treatment is offered only within specialised clinical trials and is used for aggressive forms of leukemia that have not responded to standard therapies.
Medical professionals tell me that companies and entities running experimental treatments are very financially-driven as they strive to obtain capital for their research. They also told me that the fact that the patient made a public campaign to obtain funds for his treatment may also tempt the service-providers to bump up prices.
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