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Source: ONE News -
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The government has kept an election promise to women with breast cancer and says it will finance a year-long course of Herceptin.
The decision overturns a Pharmac decision to limit the drug to nine weeks and takes effect from November 19. Women who paid for Herceptin treatment privately between the swearing in of the new government on November 19 and Wednesday can seek reimbursement from the Ministry of Health.
"It's a wonderful, wonderful Christmas present from the National government," says Claire Ryan from the Breast Cancer Aotearoa Coalition .
"This is a victory for democracy, commonsense, for science and the common good."
After three years of Pharmac refusals, 300 women each year will now get free 12 month access to Herceptin.
Health Minister Tony Ryall says the extension will be funded from the government's planned $180 million new money for pharmaceuticals over the next three years.
Patients receiving a privately funded course of 12 months Herceptin now have the option of completing the remainder of their treatment with a public provider, where it will be fully funded by the government.
"People should never lose sight of their voice because a combined voice will eventually be heard," says breast cancer sufferer Nicola Russell.
The debate has been a personal battle for breast cancer patients like Russell. The solo mum from Auckland was battling the disease, having just lost her three-year-old daughter Mackenzie to bone cancer, when she helped take the first of three petitions fighting for the full funding, to parliament.
Community fundraising gave Russell the $120,000 she needed for the drug.
"To have to beg on the streets was just the most, shall we say disempowering part of the whole thing, it was demeaning," says Russell.
But despite repeated lobbying, Pharmac kept saying no, claiming there was uncertainty with the data. Its decision meant New Zealand was the only one of 34 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries to pay for the reduced time frame.
Pharmac says it "fully respects the democratic process and will continue to assist the government". But the agency would not say more, with a spokesman telling ONE News that "any comments could be construed as government criticism".
Chris Walsh was one of eight women, dubbed the Herceptin Heroines, who took the issue to court and helped turn the fight for a cancer drug into an election issue.
"I had a tear in my eye and I was voting for Herceptin and I think a number of other women and other New Zealanders would have done the same," Dr Walsh says.
