Young mother with cancer begs for a chance to live

A young Auckland woman with cancer has made an urgent plea for help to find $118,000 to pay for an anti-cancer drug - only six weeks after her toddler died from cancer.

Nicola Russell, 32, has told relatives in Northern Ireland she desperately needs the lifesaving wonder drug Herceptin for her early-stage breast cancer, but must pay nearly $120,000 to get it in New Zealand.

Government funding of the drug is available only for women in advanced stages of breast cancer and others have to pay between $70,000 and $120,000 for a course of treatment.

Health advocates have said the policy means women with early-stage HER-2 positive cancers must choose either to find the money to optimise their chances of living or go without and accept the risk of a worse outcome.

But the friends and family of Ms Russell - originally from Northern Ireland and now living in Auckland with her 5-year-old son Conor - are trying to raise the money for her treatment in Ulster.

The front pages of the Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph yesterday told her story and carried photographs of the young mother and her surviving child. The Irish News commented that "it is distressing when people are denied access to effective therapies for financial or other reasons".

"Those who are fighting cancer shouldn't be forced to launch campaigns, go to court or take protest action to obtain potentially life-saving treatment," it said.

The Belfast Telegraph agreed and said it wanted local politicians in Ulster to take responsibility for health issues.

Ms Russell's mother Patricia, who recently returned to Kilkeel after three months in Auckland, told the Belfast Telegraph that Herceptin would give her daughter a chance of life. "It has been a heart-breaking situation for us all," she said.

At the end of December, Ms Russell's daughter Mackenzie, 3, died just months after being diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a form of bone cancer.

While caring for her, Ms Russell found out she had breast cancer and had a double mastectomy in August.

She said she believed her fight to get the drug would bring something positive out of the heartbreak.

Herceptin was last year reported to be a huge breakthrough for women diagnosed with the early stage of a particular form of breast cancer.

Soon after, Northern Ireland's Health Minister Shaun Woodward gave in to public pressure and announced that if doctors in Ulster believed their patients would benefit from Herceptin then "politics should not get in the way".

A spokesman for drug funding agency Pharmac said an application for subsidies for wider use of Herceptin would be considered by the Pharmacology Therapeutics Advisory Committee next Thursday.


Super drug

Herceptin is Government-funded only for women with advanced breast cancer.

An application for subsidised wider use of the drug will be considered next Thursday.

Pharmac chief executive Wayne McNee has warned that extending its use to treat early-stage cancer could cost $30 million.

- NZPA