KEY POINTS:
Women with early stage breast cancer should hear by next Tuesday whether district health boards will fund a nine-week treatment plan for the drug Herceptin, a move which would mean treatment was available from July.
The treatment plan, criticised in some quarters by those who favour a 12-month plan used overseas, was recommended by government drug-buying agency Pharmac -- leaving DHBs to decide whether to fund the nine-week scheme.
DHBs had earlier hoped to make a decision by the end of February but the DHBs' spokesman, Wairarapa chief executive David Meates, today told NZPA he hoped the decision would now be made by Tuesday next week.
"There's just a final bit of information we're waiting on."
Mr Meates said there was nothing to be read into the delay.
"It's just taking slightly longer than we anticipated."
If the plan was accepted, funding would be available from July 1 this year.
The cost of funding the nine-week plan was about $5 million New Zealand-wide every year.
Mr Meates did not have the figure available for how many women that would cover.
Senior doctors advising Pharmac on the implementation of Herceptin had wanted New Zealand women to receive a 12-month course but were overruled by management.
The Pharmacology and Therapeutics Advisory Committee (PTAC), comprising 10 senior practising doctors, recommended that nine weeks' treatment be funded for early stage HER2 breast cancer patients, but only after being told 12 months was not an option.
Breast Cancer Aotearoa Coalition chairwoman Libby Burgess condemned PTAC's recommendation as cheap and unethical, and said it was "throwing New Zealand women a few crumbs".
Pharmac has said that the only reason 12 months has become the more accepted course of treatment is that is what drug manufacturer Roche has licensed it for.
Pharmac deputy medical director Dilky Rasiah said international trials had shown that nine weeks concurrent therapy and 12-month sequential therapy had produced similar results.
- NZPA
