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A patient advocate says New Zealanders’ ability to access life-extending medications is in crisis and the model needs more Government funding.
Patient Voice Aotearoa chairman Malcolm Mulholland started a nationwide tour, which will run for the next month, in Palmerston North on Monday night to raise awareness about what he called the unfunded medicine crisis.
The campaign is called My Life Matters and covers a number of patient advocate groups representing more than 1 million patients with cancers and other conditions.
Mulholland has been a campaigner for better access to medications for cancer patients and an increase in Government funding for drug buying agency Pharmac. He and his late wife Wiki, who died in 2021, lobbied the Government for pay for more unfunded drugs. Mulholland himself had prostate cancer last year, but had surgery and is now clear.
My Life Matters is focused on increased investment and timely access to medications in order to cater for New Zealand’s healthcare needs, and patient benefits to be included in Government decisions about investment in medicines.
Mulholland said it took too long to access medications in New Zealand and Pharmac’s funding wasn’t enough.
“The number of patients missing out [on medications] is the same size as Hamilton, 170,000 New Zealanders. Add to that the number of people missing out on vaccines and it balloons to one and a half million. It’s an enormous problem.”
Patient Voice Aotearoa had presented multiple petitions asking for drugs to be funded and Mulholland said now 400,000 people could access the medicine they needed.
He said Pharmac valued a life at much less than other Government agencies.
“I can never get my head around the difference between patients that present at hospital after a car crash or a heart attack or the Covid pandemic. At no point has the Government come along and said ‘let me stop you there we don’t have the money’.
“That’s what they’ve done in medicine access in this country. If you have an accident there isn’t someone there saying ‘oh sorry this is going to cost too much’.”
Warwick Smith/Stuff
Patient Voice Aotearoa chairman Malcolm Mulholland speaks at the first stop of his nationwide tour focused on access to medications in New Zealand.
He said, in the United Kingdom it took six months for a drug to be assessed and funded, but New Zealand took 7.7 years.
Pharmac wasn’t fit for purpose because it didn’t have a big enough budget, which meant New Zealand lagged behind other OECD countries in access to medication, he said.
At the meeting Mulholland interviewed Manawatū woman Lydia Pei-Pereira, who has the rare condition, gastrointestinal stromal tumours.
The drug she takes isn’t funded and costs about $6000 a month, but it costs about $42 a month in Australia.
She had stayed in New Zealand because of her support networks and connections for her children, so had to fundraise to cover the cost of the drug.
“How can you put a price on life? You really can’t, it’s really heartbreaking.”
Warwick Smith/Stuff
Patient advocate Malcolm Mulholland, left, interviews Lydia Pei-Pereira, who has gastrointestinal stromal tumours.
Mulholland said the Government’s recent additional funding for Pharmac only provided for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 years, so to maintain access to the same funded medicines, an extra $181m was needed and this did not cover new medications.
He said he did not receive any money from pharmaceutical companies for his advocacy work.
Pharmac’s chief medical officer David Hughes said he appreciated people had high expectations about having timely access to medicines.
“Not having access to a funded treatment that you want is challenging and we are working hard to make more treatment options available.
“New medicines are constantly being developed for diseases like cancer and these are often very expensive.”
He said the increase to the fixed budget Pharmac received in 2022 was the largest in history and allowed for the funding of more medicines, vaccines, devices and related products.
Warwick Smith/Stuff
Patient Voice Aotearoa chairman Malcolm Mulholland says New Zealand lags behind other countries in its access to medications.
In the last financial year, Pharmac made 42 new investments and since July 1 it had made another eight.
Hughes welcomed more funding so Pharmac could work towards making more treatments available.
Each year the agency submitted a budget bid and any budget increases would be used to deliver “the best health outcomes possible for New Zealanders”.
“Pharmac is committed to making our decision-making processes faster, clearer and simpler.”
He said the funding systems of New Zealand and other countries weren’t comparable.
A spokesperson for health minister Ayesha Verrall said Pharmac operated independently to the Government and it wasn’t appropriate for her to comment.
They said Labour had increased Pharmac’s funding each year it had been in Government.
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