Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 23 October 2018.
Leader of the house, may I ask for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for health on the inequality of services provided by local health boards in Wales's NHS, please? I have been contacted by a constituent who suffers from progressive coronary artery disease, CAD. This disease is slowly flooding up his arteries, increasing his risk of suffering a heart attack, stroke or blood clot. His specialist has recommended that he should be treated with apheresis and, if he were living in Cardiff, his consultant would have given this treatment straight away. However, because Aneurin Bevan health board do not recognise this as a standard procedure, they have had to make an individual patient funding request for this treatment. Can we have a statement from the Cabinet Secretary on why patients are being denied life-changing treatments simply because of where they live and what action he will take to address this postcode lottery in the NHS in Wales, please?