These medicines have, of course, been approved by NICE or the AWMSG to treat a wide range of diseases. The list and scope of the therapeutic areas covered are too long for me to list here, but it includes medicines for a wide variety of treatment including arthritis, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, asthma and rare conditions like Fabry disease. 

Just over 40 per cent of the medicines recommended are for the treatment of various cancers. Thirty of the recommended medicines were identified at appraisal as offering patients a new, more effective treatment option or addressing an unmet clinical need. These included new treatments for cancer, a serious sight-threatening disease, life-threatening genetic disorders and chronic lung disease. 

These illustrate the breadth and scope of the new treatment fund. They also highlight the importance that the Welsh Government has placed on ensuring rapid access to all recommended medicines for all conditions. That is not the approach taken across our border in England. All of the diseases or conditions that I have just mentioned have a very real impact on the quality of life for the individual and their loved ones, and that is why, in Wales, we ensure that the new treatment fund treats all diseases equally and does not prioritise the funding of one disease over another. The full list of recommended medicines is published on AWMSG’s website and a link has been provided for Members. 

I expect full compliance to now be sustained over the five-year period of the fund. In practical terms, this means all medicines recommended must be available no later than two months after the AWMSG or NICE recommendation is published. When I reported on initial progress in July, I advised there had been some variation in the availability of a few medicines recommended during the first few months of the fund. Since those early variation issues, I am pleased to report that our NHS has made rapid and much more consistent progress. 

Before the introduction of the new treatment fund, health boards were expected to make recommended medicines available no later than three months or 90 days from the NICE or AWMSG published decision. In the first six months of launching the new treatment fund, we have reduced the time taken to make medicines available by 81 per cent. In real terms, that meant the average time taken for health boards across Wales to make medicines available was 17 days in the first six months of the new treatment fund. We have now seen even further improvements during the second six months of the fund. The time taken to make a medicine available has now dropped to an average of 10 days across Wales. That represents an almost 90 per cent reduction in access time across Wales. The two-month time frame is the latest date by which a medicine should become available to prescribe where clinically appropriate. Our goal is to make these medicines available as soon as possible. I am pleased to report that nearly 83 per cent of recommended medicines were made available across Wales within 30 days.  

I welcome, of course, the effort and the achievement of our NHS in making our commitment a reality for patients across Wales. Chief executives and chairs of health boards are clear that the expectation is that they will continue to deliver consistent and sustained full compliance with the requirements of the new treatment fund. The citizens of Wales deserve nothing less. I will, of course, continue to scrutinise health boards and trust performance in delivering their obligations under the treatment fund and hold chief executives and chairs to account for delivery.

Making new medicines available to patients often requires detailed infrastructure and care pathway planning and that can be financially challenging, particularly in the first 12 months. The new treatment fund is designed to support health boards prepare sustainable plans for the introduction of new medicines. Safety, of course, is a paramount consideration when introducing each new medicine. That can mean changes are necessary to the way in which clinical services operate: for example, there may need to be additional or different monitoring of patients to be introduced; patients may need testing, for example, for their clinical suitability. Understanding all of the requirements to introduce a medicine safely and effectively at an early stage is essential and central to fast and sustained access.

Since I launched the fund in January last year, I have talked consistently about the need for the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry and NHS Wales to work more closely together on this agenda. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Cymru Wales continue to be supportive of our approach to the medicines agenda and in particular, the principles of our new treatment fund. I welcome the work they are doing with NHS Wales stakeholders to improve the level and timing of information provided by manufacturers on new medicines. Strengthening financial forecasting and infrastructure planning makes absolute sense to everyone. The industry benefits when its products are adopted quickly, and most importantly, patients benefit from faster access.

The establishment of the new treatment fund is an explicit objective in the Welsh Government’s national strategy, 'Prosperity For All'. In the first full year that the new treatment fund has been in operation, we have substantially shortened the time taken to make medicines available by 85 per cent. We pledged to the people of Wales that our new treatment fund would deliver faster, more consistent access to new life-changing medicines for all conditions. We have kept our promise, and every part of Wales is now seeing the benefit.