March 21, 2019
Cancer drug regime means women begging for lives
FULL INTERIVEW LIBBY BURGESS CLICK HERE
Wahine are having to beg for their lives because Pharmac won’t fund the new types of drugs that can help with their cancers.
That’s the view of women who this week asked the health select committee to conduct a review of the Government drug buying agency.
Breast Cancer Aotearoa chair Libby Burgess says there have been great advances in cancer treatments in recent years, but they an come with a high price tag, and Pharmac policies seem stuck in the past.
It means women are struggling to buy drugs that can extend their lives, or going without.
"Women are having to set up GiveALittle pages and they feel they are begging for their lives and it's totally unacceptable. The fact we are having to pay for high cost medicines is driving and magnifying socioeconomic disparities. It is having a greater effect on Maori," Ms Burgess says.
New Zealand spends just 5 percent of its health budget on drugs compared with an OECD average of 14 percent, but the under-spending creates higher costs elsewhere in the health system, and means people die earlier than they need to.
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