Source: Radio New Zealand
Professor Judith Trotman and Health Minister Simeon Brown. Supplied
The Health Minister has agreed to meet with a group of blood cancer specialists who wrote an open letter expressing their alarm at Kiwi patients dying unnecessarily because Aotearoa is lagging behind with treatments.
The dozens of doctors, nurses and clinician researchers say New Zealand blood cancer patients are being deprived of modern, funded treatments that are available globally, including the myeloma drug Daratumumab.
They’ve laid out a three-point plan, including an immediate increase in funding for the drug-buying agency for Pharmac,
The letter was largely prompted by the case of Greymouth myeloma patient and former shearer Tawhai Reti, who’s had to leave his four young children with a relative and go to Australia with his wife Lani to get a life-extending drug that is not funded here.
Professor Judith Trotman, the Chair of the Australasian Leukaemia Lymphoma Research Group and an expat Kiwi-Australian haematologist in Sydney, who is treating Tawhai Reti, coordinated the letter.
She told Checkpoint that she and the dozens of doctors who signed the letter felt compelled due to the distress their New Zealand peers were experiencing.
“New Zealand is not funding drugs with a cascading effect on patients’ lives, on doctors’ morale, and drug development. Patients are being lost to their disease, and doctors lost to overseas,” she said.
“We really felt compelled to do something on behalf of but in lockstep with the cancer community.”
Trotman said blood doctors in New Zealand feel that they simply don’t have the tools of their trade and are seeing their patients dying earlier.
“They are not only dying earlier, they are not living well,” she added.
Blood cancer patients in New Zealand were constantly in hospital with recurrent infections. While patients with myeloma, in particular, are repeatedly breaking their bones, Trotman said.
A three-point plan put to the government calls for more funding for medicines that are considered ‘standard of care’ overseas, pointing out that only 0.4 percent of New Zealand’s GDP is spent on medicines, compared to the OECD median of 1.4 percent.
Trotman said New Zealand need to establish a funding trajectory for Pharmac to deliver these standards of care blood cancer medicines to levels comparable with OECD nations.
“When you are only spending one-third the equivalent of GDP of the OECD average, that’s a huge gap to fill. It will take some time, but it’s going to take far too many lives if it takes too long,” she said.
“Blood cancer patients are exquisitely sensitive to Pharmac funding. They can not be prevented with public health measures by the cancer control agency [and] they cannot be removed by the surgeons. They can only be treated with these life-saving, life-changing new therapies that only Pharmac can provide.”
Trotman said Health Minister Simeon Brown has offered to convene a round table with the local blood cancer community, both clinicians and consumer groups.
She said he acknowledged the problem and thanked the hardworking clinicians.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
