A boy with cancer has been given the all-clear after he had treatment in Turkey he was denied on the NHS. Charlie Ilsley, 12, had targeted radiotherapy on spinal tumours after travelling to the country.
His mum Toni Ilsley says if she had not managed to raise the money for private treatment through a GoFundMe page, he would have died.
NHS teams had deemed him untreatable 18 months ago, the BBC reports. ‘If I had listened to them Charlie wouldn’t be here now – it doesn’t bear thinking about,’ his mum said. Charlie, from Reading, initially had surgery to remove a brain tumour in 2015, but cancer returned on his spine.
Mrs Ilsley says she was told by doctors at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford that nothing more could be done for him to stop the cancer spreading. She began to research different treatments he could have abroad and found out about targeted radiotherapy, available in Turkey.
However, it would cost an estimated £100,000 – so she began fundraising. ‘
When Charlie had his first scan in Turkey and the first treatment was working, I remember feeling really happy… and then angry that this couldn’t be done in my own country,’ Mrs Ilsley said. N
HS England said in a statement: ‘Decisions about the right treatment are difficult, which is why they are made by clinical experts.
‘The NHS does fund this treatment for lung cancer as well as research into other types of cancer, however, it is not always clinically appropriate or better treatment than others already available on the NHS.’
His mother is raising money again so Charlie can fly to Cologne, Germany for immunotherapy treatment that will help his body fight the threat of the disease returning.