A multiple sclerosis sufferer has told how she is "living a nightmare" because is being denied a wonder drug on the NHS.

Sharon Gibson is desperate to get a prescription for Aimspro which alleviates her symptoms with 20 minutes and helps her live a normal life.

Without the medication the 53-year-old is is constant pain and is unable walk outside without a wheelchair.

Mrs Gibson, who has has MS since she was 22, was chosen to trial the drug in 2001 and noticed an immediate improvement in her health.

But the trial ended in 2005 and since then she has been unable to afford the drug, which costs about £200 a week.

Mrs Gibson said: "The drug was absolutely fantastic and life was good again. For the first time in as long as I could remember I felt like I had a future.

"I started off having one injection a week then I had two. But one day my husband rang up the clinic and was told the trial had stopped.

"On a day-to-day basis without it I feel awful. It is devastating there is a drug out there which I know will change my life but I can't have."

Mrs Gibson, who survived breast cancer in 2000, won £800 playing bingo in 2006 and immediately spent the money on Aimspro to give her some respite from her suffering.

In October 2006 she visited her GP because she was in agony and was given two cortisone injections.

But the pain got worse and she had to pay £6,000 to have the problem treated privately. Surgeons operated on her by removing a disc from her spine which was trapping nerves.

The drug is not ready for the prescription market but people can buy it privately. It costs £3,000 for a 15 weeks supply.

The NHS will only prescribe it in exceptional circumstances but Mrs Gibson said she has been refused the treatment.

A spokesman for Brighton and Hove City Teaching Primary Care Trust said: "Our decisions about which drugs can be prescribed are based on evidence about their effectiveness.

"This particular drug has never been licensed for use in the UK as the trials did not demonstrate that it was an effective remedy for patients with MS.

"We therefore do not fund its use in normal circumstances."

A spokeswoman for the Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre said: "Aimspro is a very promising drug and we would obviously like to see it licensed and more readily available."

Peter Branch of campaign charity Proventus, which wants Aimspro to be given a license, said: "More or less all of the 150 people in the country who use the drug have to pay for it."