Pharmac secures new cancer, asthma drugs

Te Whanganui-a-Tara - Nationally drug-funding agency Pharmac has secured an agreement for medicines that will help New Zealanders with lung cancer, ovarian cancer and severe asthma.   

The government has increased Pharmac funding by 25 percent over the past four years in order to make deals for new medicines like this possible. Pharmac’s budget has increased to $1.1 billion for supplying medicines.

 An agreement with AstraZeneca includes new discounts on three medicines Pharmac already buys the extension of a medicine for ovarian cancer to more people and the purchase of new medicines to treat people with a severe form of asthma and with stage-three lung cancer.

The lung-cancer treatment is particularly significant because it offers people with lung cancer the potential to extend their lives more than what is possible now, especially when combined with what might come out of a multi-million dollar research programme about to get under way.

Every year, about 1800 New Zealanders die from lung cancer and is the biggest cause of cancer-related death in this country. It is often not diagnosed until it’s too late to treat it.

It can be difficult for patients and doctors to recognise the symptoms for what they are and getting access to scans or biopsies for a timely diagnosis may not be easy.

One of the goals of new research being funded by Te Aho o Te Kahu, the Health Research Council and the Ministry of Health, is finding effective and equitable ways of detecting lung cancers sooner so people can be treated with medicines which are part of what Pharmac has secured from AstraZeneca.

Lung cancer is the biggest cause of cancer-related deaths in New Zealand, with about 1800 people dying from it each year. Most is non-small cell lung cancer.

Māori are three times more likely than New Zealand Europeans to develop lung cancer and to die from it.

People are more likely to survive if they are diagnosed early, because treatments like surgery are available. Eight out of 10 people diagnosed early are still alive five years later, but fewer than one in 10 who are diagnosed with late-stage cancer live for five years. Survival rate is worse for Māori.