Decision of the collegiate board of the National Supplementary Health Agency (ANS), published on Tuesday (31), in the Official Gazette, determines the inclusion of six new oral therapies against cancer in the list of mandatory procedures of health plans.
The measure had been approved by the agency’s management the day before. From the date of publication, health plan operators will have ten days to offer treatments to customers.
So-called anticancer therapies are used to destroy malignant disease cells. They are drugs to treat different types of cancer, such as leukemia, lung and prostate, for early and advanced stages.
Director of the Brazilian Society of Clinical Oncology, Angélica Nogueira says that the ANS has undergone recent changes that have reduced the interval between meetings to analyze the incorporation of new drugs. The meetings are no longer biennial, to occur quarterly, with continuous submission of medications.
“They are important medicines for different moments of the disease. The impact is great for patients, who now have more therapeutic options. These are expensive procedures. Therefore, there is great pressure from health plan operators to incorporate them, even because they are used for long periods”, says the oncologist.
For Elge Werneck, clinical oncologist at the Oncoclínicas Group, the measure is positive because it opens up patients’ access to treatments that, until then, were prohibitively expensive for a large part of the population.
According to him, some can cost up to R$ 30,000 per month, and need to be done for years. He recalls that lung cancer is the one that kills the most in the world, and prostate cancer is responsible for the highest incidence of the disease among men.
“The impact is gigantic. These are modalities of high incidence, and some of these drugs are disease course modifiers. They can change life expectancy and are first-line treatment: they take the lead as the first therapeutic option, as they are more effective and efficient. And they also have a low level of toxicity”, celebrates the specialist.
The drugs included in the list are: apalutamide, acalabrutinib, enzalutamide and lorlatinibi, for different types of cancer and stages of the disease.
Sought, the Brazilian Association of Health Plans (Abramge) informed, through a note, that it participates in the process of updating the list of procedures and events of the ANS, and that the process of submission, analysis and incorporation of new technologies “is done continuously with tight deadlines of 120 days for oral antineoplastic drugs”.
In the same position, the entity highlights that the incorporation of new technologies must be done in a rational way, “respecting the clinical safety of patients and the sustainability of the health system”.
Source: CNN Brasil
