Best-selling writer Terry Pratchett has criticised a conclusion to limit the availability of the drug Aricept to people in the later stages of Alzheimer's disease.
Pratchett, an Alzheimer's martyr, will tell the BBC's Panorama tonight that the decision by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's (NICE) opinion felt "care an insult".
"Alzheimer's is a particularly unpleasant disease. I don't know anyone who's got better from Alzheimer's. It strips our humanness a mo at a time until you end up a vegetable," the 60-year-old writer will say tonight.
"Aricept bathroom slow the disease's advancement and costs just �2.50 a day. But there ar 400,000 Alzheimer's sufferers in the UK so Aricept has been ruled out for NHS utilization in the mild stages except in Scotland.
"I induce no trouble paying, but some people can't. My wife and PA noticed changes in me after two months on it. I ill-used to bollocks with buttons and posterior belts. Now I aim dressed normally and seat belts microscope slide in first time. Mentally, it's the difference between a sunny day and an overcast day," the Discworld serial publication writer declared.
"Alzheimer's scares people and at 04:00 in the morning it scares me, and Aricept is well worth having for the relief that it brings."
Pratchett said NICE's ruling was stripping patients of the benefits of the drug.
"I feel in particular angry on behalf of early onset patients because it feels like an insult and the younger you are the more than insulting it is," he said.
"It's probably easier to get drugs off Fat Charlie rung the back of the bus station than it is to get medicines - but there we are."
Pratchett was diagnosed with the disease back in December, since when he has been a tearing campaigner for sufferers of Alzheimer's.
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