Kasia Boddy takes a cocktail of drugs and has chemotherapy

Kasia Boddy's cancer was diagnosed seven months ago and her doctors wanted her treated with Herceptin, not generally available on the NHS.

Now South Cambs Primary Care Trust has decided to make the drug available for all eligible patients.

Herceptin is not licensed for early breast cancer.

It is usually only used by women in the late stages of the disease.

Kasia Boddy, 38, of Cambridge, who had joined a lobby group urging the government to speed up the licensing of Herceptin, said: "At the moment its been quite piecemeal - the odd (primary care trust) here and there, and also some PCTs are just funding one or two women.

"I think really we need this to be a national decision to fund everybody in the country and not have postcode prescribing."

'Looking at the evidence'

Earlier this month North Stoke Primary Care Trust reversed a decision not to give a breast cancer sufferer the treatment after Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt questioned its ruling.

The director of public health in South Cambridgeshire, Dr Dorothy Gregson, said Ms Hewitt's announcements were important to their decision-making.

The drug is already used for advanced cancer

Experts say Herceptin could be a major breakthrough in reducing the chances of the disease returning for some patients.

Treatments such as chemotherapy poison the cancer cells, but are indiscriminate and kill off healthy cells at the same time.

Herceptin attacks the tumour cells and then stimulates the body's own immune system to kill them. Only one in five patients has the right genetic make up for it to work.