Alethea Nathan has lung cancer, she is relying on her Life Insurance payout to cover the high costs for the drugs she needs and hopes more affordable options are on the horizon.
A Northland mother forking out $7500 every three weeks for lung cancer treatment is pleading with Pharmac to publicly fund the drugs for the killer disease and stop needless deaths.
Alethea Nathan, 39, from Whangārei is undergoing chemotherapy which is publicly funded and immunotherapy which is not and said it was terrible patients in a developed country were made to fund their own treatment.
She is paying for the drug Atezolizumab, an intravenous injection, which is one of six lung cancer treatment drugs the Lung Foundation New Zealand is calling on Pharmac to fund.
Another drug, Alecensa, has recently been registered by Medsafe as a new medicine and can now be sold in the country but is not publicly funded.
Each year, 129 Northlanders are diagnosed with lung cancer and they make up 12 per cent of all new cancer cases in Northland.
Nathan started coughing blood and experienced mostly back pain and fatigue in September 2015 and relied on painkillers such as Paracetamol and Ibuprofen.
"The doctors said I was a young mum who was tired, was breastfeeding, have postural problems from lifting my child and suggested I go for physio but it wasn't until I had a CT scan in May 2016 when I was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer."
She was put on the drug Tarceva, which worked for only four months.
Alethea Nathan is pleading with Pharmac to fund drugs used by lung cancer suferers.
Photo/John Stone
Nathan was then prescribed another drug, Osimertinib, which is not publicly funded but she was able to get it under compassionate scheme.
It worked for about one year before she recently started chemo and immunotherapy.
"There's so much publicity about breast cancer, prostate cancer and melanoma but more people die of lung cancer every year than those three combined, yet the drugs are not publicly funded," Nathan said.
She has life insurance that currently pays for immunotherapy but it won't cover the entire treatment.
"So many people are dying of lung cancer in New Zealand and I think the drugs for its treatment should be available and funded because it will make a massive difference in people's lives."
Nathan said it had been a roller coaster ride as sometimes she felt no pain whereas other times, she experienced a lot of agony.
"You get fatigue and the potential complication of risks that go with it. Even walking to the letterbox sometimes is a challenge."
Pharmac chief executive Sarah Fitt said funding applications for all six lung cancer treatment drugs have been received and were being considered.
She said Pharmac used expert clinical advisors when considering funding application for new medicines.
Pharmac could not provide a definitive timeframe for if, or when, funding decisions would be made for a particular medicine, she said.
Whangārei mum Alethea Nathan is paying more than $7500 every three weeks for lung cancer treatment that's not publicly funded.
Photo/John Stone
Medical director of Lung Foundation NZ associate professor Chris Atkinson said people having to pay for treatments introduced a new toxicity of lung cancer care— financial toxicity.
"There are a multiplicity of drugs available to treat lung cancer, other than chemotherapy, but we just don't have them available to New Zealanders unless they fund their own treatment and it's exacerbating an inequity."
Lung Foundation NZ chief executive Philip Hope said the country was not embracing innovative treatments like targeted therapy and immunotherapy that were the standard of care in OECD countries.
"Patients are desperate, they are telling us they want to live longer, to have more time with their families and not be stigmatised or disadvantaged.
"We know that more than 7300 people have donated money to help a friend or colleague with lung cancer fund treatment and this simply highlights the degree of inequity that lung cancer patients suffer in New Zealand."
Lung cancer symptoms can include a persistent, unexplained cough, chest pain, shortness of breath, noisy breathing coughing blood, excess phlegm and weight loss.
