Tight hospital budgets mean that some 1,000 cancer patients a year are not getting the best medicine available, the AD reported on Thursday.

Quoting research from the cancer patients’ association NFK, the newspaper said hospitals sometimes give patients less effective and cheaper drugs.
The NFK’s investigation focused on Herceptin, which is used to treat certain types of breast cancer, and Velcade, which treats Kahler’s disease. Treatment with expensive drugs costs tens of thousands of euros a year, said NFK director Patricia Huijbregts.
‘For that money, a hospital manager can also take on a nurse.’ But it should not be up to hospitals but politicians to make that sort of decision, Huijbregts told the paper.