Maori use of medicine soars with heart push

A campaign to get men to take their medicines has almost quadrupled prescriptions of cholesterol-reducing drugs for Maori men.

The "One Heart Many Lives" campaign, started by the Government's medicine-buying agency Pharmac in 2003, aims to close what is now a nine-year gap between the expected lives of Maori and non-Maori men. On average, non-Maori men now live to 79, but the average Maori man will die at 70.

In Northland, one of two areas where the campaign began, the average Maori man will die at just 64 - a shocking 14 years before his non-Maori neighbours. Heart disease is Maori men's major killer.

Although Pharmac's usual goal is to hold down medicine usage to keep within its budget, its general manager of access and optimal use, Marama Parore, said the heart campaign's goal was to lift usage, especially for Maori and Pacific men.

In 2002, the agency opened up access to the main cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, which were previously restricted to prescriptions by heart specialists.

At that time, the age-adjusted dispensing rate of statins for both Maori and Pacific people was about 20 per cent below the European rate, even though Maori and Pacific people had higher rates of heart disease.

After a small pilot in Porirua, the "One Heart Many Lives" campaign started in Hawkes Bay in 2006 and spread into Northland in 2007.

A Kaitaia-based health agency, Te Hauora o Te Hiku o Te Ika, helped a group of Maori men to create a version of the campaign, the "Bro Files".

The Bros - 24 of them so far - have volunteered to be role models for other Maori men, getting their heart health checked, exercising more and changing their diet.

Pharmac data show the age-adjusted statin-dispensing rate for Maori nationwide has almost quadrupled from just under 400 dispensings for every 1000 people in 2001-02 to 1500 in the year to June 2007.