Pharmac extends bone-building drug subsidy

Osteoporosis New Zealand is welcoming news the Government will subsidise the bone-building drug alendronate to up to 100,000 New Zealanders.

Government drug funding agency Pharmac yesterday announced it was widening its access criteria for the drug, sold under the brand name Fosamax.

Until now only about 20,000 people were eligible for the drug but under the new criteria patients will only have to be at a high risk of bone fractures rather than having already sustained fractures.

Osteoporosis New Zealand vice- chairwoman Tessa Turnbull said the group was happy with the new criteria.

"We are absolutely delighted. It's something we've lobbied for over the last few years."

Dr Turnbull, a Katikati general practitioner, said the old criteria had been "quite restrictive".

Patients' bone density had to be quite low and they had to have had a bone density scan, Dr Turnbull said.

"If you were very elderly or frail and unable to undertake the trip into a centre to have a bone density scan, you were ineligible."

The only further improvement to subsidies she believed were necessary were for alternative drugs for people who could not tolerate alendronate, which could be quite hard on gastro-intestinal systems.

Dr Turnbull said alendronate was the first drug available in New Zealand that could actually build bones rather than drugs that only maintained bones.

Canterbury Osteoporosis Society chairwoman Trish Adams said many sufferers had had to pay for the drug themselves, which cost about $70 a month for four pills.

Gloria Streat, 64, of Christchurch, said she had been taking the medication for 12 years and it had been "enormously" helpful.

Ms Streat saw her mother suffer spinal crush fractures and other breakages from her early 50s and had been told she was on the same slippery slope."It's awful to watch, extremely painful," she said.

"My mother broke her sternum and many other bones just from sneezing and things like that."

Osteoporosis increases the risk of bones fracturing because of a reduction in bone mineral density.

Pharmac said at least 137,000 people were affected by osteoporosis, mostly women and the elderly.

Osteoporosis affects 30 per cent of all women aged over 60 years of age, and more than half of women aged 80 and over.

Pharmac estimated the change in access criteria would increase alendronate spending to nearly $17 million a year.

- NZPA