Herceptin campaigners protest in Aotea Square

Protestors carry a pink coffin in Aotea Square. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Bad weather reinforced the bad news for Herceptin campaigners today as they marched, funeral-style, across Aotea Square.

About 40 people, mainly women, were protesting against the decision of Pharmac and the 21 district health boards last Friday not to extend free access to the expensive medicine Herceptin to women with a kind of early stage breast cancer.

It is already state funded for women in the late (terminal) stage of HER2-protein-positive breast cancer.

Six "pallbearers" - including National MP and breast physician Jackie Blue and Herceptin patient Anne Hayden - carried a pink coffin from Queen St to the steps of the Aotea Centre.

On the coffin were the words: "Breast cancer kills. Herceptin saves lives."

During the drizzly lunchtime protest, one of the organisers, Libby Burgess, of the Breast Cancer Advocacy Coalition, said it was to express "our utter dismay" at the decision not to extend funding for the early stage of the disease.

"We know, Pharmac knows and the Government knows that this will result in unnecessary loss of lives of women who now have early, curable cancer."

She invited protesters to be quiet for a moment of remembrance for those who had died, and those who would die, of breast cancer and then asked the participants each to place a flower, or a note to a breast cancer victim, in the coffin.

Around 20 women are paying their own way to have Herceptin for early breast cancer, at a cost on average of more than $100,000.

Pharmac has said extending funding for early breast cancer is not justified based on the clinical trial data it has seen and because of the cost. A Pharmac committee will review the latest data next month.

It is estimated that around 400 of the more than 2500 breast cancer cases diagnosed in New Zealand each year are HER2-positive.