EARLIER this week, we said that the North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust had a moral duty to give the go-ahead for the drug Sutent to be prescribed to kidney cancer sufferer Barbara Selby.

Yesterday, Britain's foremost kidney cancer specialist echoed that call, demanding an end to the "postcode lottery" which means that patients in some parts of the country get access to life-extending drugs while others elsewhere do not.

Professor Tim Eisen, of Cambridge University, knows what he is talking about and he says there is no doubt that Sutent and another drug called Nexavar represent a genuine breakthrough in the treatment of kidney cancer.

Earlier this week, it was announced that kidney cancer patients in the North-East and Cumbria will now be able to be treated with Sutent following a U-turn by health chiefs in the region.

But Mrs Selby is unfortunate enough to live across the North Yorkshire border in Richmond so she can't get the drug.

We repeat that this cannot be right. We understand why the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) was established, but it is proving to be too slow to approve drugs and the result is unfairness at the heart of our health service.

In the light of this week's decision in the neighbouring North-East, and the intervention of Professor Eisen, we believe the position of the PCT covering North Yorkshire is increasingly untenable.