The government released a review into Pharmac yesterday to assess how well Pharmac performs against its objectives and whether its performance could be improved, with a focus on equitable outcomes among different ethnic groups, including Māori and Pacific Islanders. The report was not allowed to recommend an increase to Pharmac’s funding.
Per capita New Zealand ranks near the bottom of the OECD for medicine funding. While the report is critical of many aspects of Pharmac, and we support the recommendation for Pharmac to work closer with Te Aho O Te Kahu (the Cancer Control Agency), we were disappointed by its other recommendations for cancer.
In particular, the report recommended that cancer medicines:
- should no longer receive special treatment
- should not receive special funding
These recommendations ignore the fact that cancer patients do not have the luxury of time. They are dying every day.
The report talks about how comparable health systems are funding cancer treatments of ‘no or marginal benefit’, but it fails to mention that NZ’s cancer survival rate has changed the least of those comparable systems (corresponding with the advent of modern medicines) and that we now rank at the bottom of these comparable countries for cancer survival. Australia’s ovarian cancer survival is 43%, while NZ’s is 36%. Women in NZ have similar survival rates before recurrence as Australia, but once they experience a recurrence survival rates drop. This difference is mostly due to a lack of medicine funding.
The report talks about how clinical trials for treatments do not reflect New Zealand’s unique ethnic background, but fails to mention that these clinical trials do not include New Zealand because we do not fund standard of care treatments that form the treatment control arm of many clinical trials.
The report talks about how cancer medicines are unaffordable, but fails to mention that what they consider unaffordable is $5 per person a week. That is the difference between New Zealand’s medicine budget and Australia’s – the cost of a packet of Panadol.
As an organisation, we strongly endorse Patient Voice Aotearoa’s call to double Pharmac’s budget. It is time to fund medicines appropriately.
Further reading: “Cancer, rare disorder advocates call for more radical change after damning Pharmac review” by Bridie Witton published in Stuff – June 2, 2022
OCFNZ started as Cure Our Ovarian Cancer in 2018, with a focus on low-grade serous ovarian cancer. In 2020, we expanded our focus to include all ovarian cancer and, in 2024, we changed our name to the Ovarian Cancer Foundation New Zealand.
