By Felix Walton of RNZ
Cancer patients are dubious the Government will deliver on its promise to fund 13 new cancer drugs.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has come under pressure to fund the drugs after they were absent from last week’s Budget announcement.
Christchurch resident Vickie Hudson-Craig, who was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2020, said she was in disbelief when she saw the Budget last week.
“We were so sure [the funding] would be announced,” she said.
Hudson-Craig spends more than $5000 a month on dabrafenib and trametinib, the drugs she needs to stay alive.
“That mental stress of, even before you get up in the morning, not knowing where you’re going to find that money from and how long it’s going to last,” she said.
“To have it funded would have meant the stress would just disappear.”
Luxon’s pledge to fulfil his promise “soon” was not good enough, she said.
“To say ‘we’re going to announce something soon... it’ll be this year, we don’t quite know when’ – it’s not good enough for people who are dying.
“Even if it was a timeframe where they said ‘it’ll be funded in November’ or whatever the timeframe was... then at least we would know.”
Tauranga-based lawyer Murray Denyer was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2017.
Denyer said it was unfair for the Government to play with patients’ feelings.
“It’s stressful and hard enough living with a disease that’s likely to kill you... only to have a potential life-extending treatment dangled in front of you and then taken away,” he said.
“To have made that promise and not delivered on it on Budget Day is extremely disappointing.”
Denyer said he felt lucky to be in a position where he could pay his own way.
“In the six years that I’ve been funding my own treatments I’ve spent just over $200,000 of my own money,” he said.
“The only reason I’m sitting here and talking to you today is because I’ve been able to do that... I must be amongst a pretty small portion of Kiwis who can get access to the sort of money required to fund these medicines.”
Gisborne resident Theresa Zame has stage four lung cancer.
The medicine she takes, osimertinib, is so expensive in New Zealand that she flies it in from overseas.
“It’s [funded] in every OECD country apart from New Zealand,” she said.
“I pay $1000 a month to import the generic from Bangladesh, if I was to purchase the medication here in New Zealand it would cost me $10,000 a month.”
Like Hudson-Craig, Zame was doubtful Luxon would keep his promise.
“I just don’t know whether to believe anything they say any more. It was a promise... they really tugged at a lot of people’s heartstrings,” she said.
“I had friends who said to me, ‘I’m going to vote for them if they’re going to do that for you and you’ll get your medication’... They knew there was a movement in New Zealand talking about this and they really used that to get more votes.”
His ratings have probably improved since the CCO reforms, says the mayor.