Keytruda is a prescription medicine used to treat a kind of skin cancer called melanoma.
The announcement that Pharmac is likely to fund Keytruda, a drug used for the treatment of melanoma, shows just how much ordinary people can achieve when they band together to make their voices heard.
Pharmac issued a consultation document proposing to pay for Keytruda from September 1.
This follows its
earlier decision to fund Keytruda rival Opdivo, starting July 1.
Both are high-cost cancer drugs in a new class of immunotherapy medicines, called PD-1 inhibitors, which are extending the lives of some advanced-melanoma patients who have no other treatment options.
Pharmac said in the consultation notice that it had "now reached a commercially favourable provisional agreement" with the maker of Keytruda (pembrolizumab), Merck Sharp and Dohme, and was seeking feedback on the proposal which also involved two other drugs.
