A NORTH-EAST multiple sclerosis sufferer has issued a personal appeal to Health Secretary Alan Milburn to stop a wonder drug being withheld from patients.

Jane Sinski, 41, from near Middleton St George, outside Darlington, said the controversial drug - beta interferon - has dramatically improved her health since she was prescribed it in January.

Angered at reports the experts advising the Government have decided the drug has only marginal benefits for patients and should not be available on the NHS, she has written to the Darlington MP.

Her protest coincides with today's sitting of an independent panel which will hear seven appeals against the interim decision.

Peter Cardy, chief executive of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, which is one of the appellants, said: "We could be on the brink of a huge injustice."

Only about three per cent of British MS sufferers are currently on beta interferon, compared with about 15 per cent in the US and Europe.

The MS society has accepted the drug will not help all, but said every sufferer should be given the chance to try the £10,000-a-year drug.

In her strongly-worded letter, Mrs Sinski, who has two young children, said the difference the drug had made to her health had been "amazing, wonderful, brilliant".

But the news that the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice) had come to a provisional decision that the drug should not be prescribed on the NHS was devastating, she said.

"You may as well have stabbed me in the back. How dare someone sitting behind a desk in a nice cosy office be able to make such a decision? Has that person spoken to anyone with MS who had benefited from the drug?"

A spokeswoman for Nice said it could not comment until the guidance is issued later this year.

A spokesman for Mr Milburn said he had seen a copy of Mrs Sinski's letter but could not comment until after the guidance is published.

Jane Sinski's story: Page 1