KEY POINTS:
The drug Herceptin could be available to women with early stage breast cancer within months after district health boards (DHBs) today provisionally approved funding.
The approval for a nine-week treatment for women with HER2 positive cancer is expected to cost $6 million. About 350 women are affected by the change, due to take effect from June 1.
This forum debate has now closed. Here is a selection of your views on the topic.
B P Lewis
Unfortunately for the individuals but fortunate for the majority not all required medicines are free to all.We need to balance our medical spending so a greater number of individuals receives appropriate care. Currently women take a disproportionate slice of health spending especially in the form of pharmacology.I think the greater crime incurrent health spending is the lack of equal share of health dollars spent on mens health. Maternity aside women use approximately 75 per cent of all health budgets and that is a crime against men.
Ferret
I think that the nine weeks worth of Herceptin is a joke. Not only are people in New Zealand not getting the right amount of cancer treatment, but they also are not getting it fast enough. I hope I dont get cancer in New Zealand, as I do not hold much faith in the treatment available.
Alfred
"9.4 per cent of those on the drug relapsed as opposed to the 17.2 per cent of those not on Herceptin" [Wikipedia] Now this would indicate that 12 month Herceptin might save lives in 10 per cent of cases. At 100,000 per case, we are looking at more than a million dollars to save a life. We would be crazy to fund this if there are any cheaper ways to save lives (prevention, surgery -- hundreds die on waiting lists each year). So, if you choose to fund Herceptin before all cheaper (per life saved) treatments, more kiwis will die. I take my hat off to those who are braving the current campaign and making the right decisions. They are the ones who are saving lives.
Michael Draper
Over the past several months, intelligent groups of individuals in 23 countries, similar in character to New Zealand, decided to fund the 12 months Herceptin option for early stage breast cancer sufferers. New Zealands Pharmac however apparently knows better than the rest of the world and has decided, after much delay, to only fund the 3 month option. In a country that thought of having back to front telephone dials, car registration stickers on the outside of car windscreens, children driving high powered cars using toy-town driving licences with no insurance requirements and public transport and school examinations in shambles etc etc, perhaps we should have expected such a decision. But Pharmac should be seen for what it is; a screen behind which the Government hides, with a capped budget set by the government at about half the amount spent in other countries and its function is to stay within that budget. It is in fact Ms Clarks government that is solely responsible for not funding the 12 month Herceptin option. If only Ms Clark would come out from behind the Pharmac screen and take responsibility for this awful situation that results in the unnecessary death of so many New Zealand Women. I realize that she needs hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund football stadiums and the like, but surely there must be some left over for the less important things as well? And for those families that are able to come up with the 100 thousand dollars to fund the Herceptin themselves, this Government has a special way of thanking them they take another $12,500 in GST! And no, it certainly is not refundable. I know, the finance minister told me so.
Andrew Montgomery
The decision is clearly "dollar based"because there are no case control studies which support the efficacy of the shorter course. The cost of the legal fallout from the ADHBs incompetence with the DML debacle would have been sufficient to pay for every woman who meets the criteria for the current 12 month protocol It is unfortunate that bureaucratic incompetence in the health sector is now threatening to tip New Zealand permanently into second world health care.The blame for this can be entirely sheeted home to the anti-intellectual and anti doctor stance assumed by the Labour Government and its DHB acolytes. Our country will not recover from this gross and expensive mismanagement of the health sector.
Kelly Simpson
I am a 31-year-old young lady with a partner and 2 children. I am trying to get thought all my chemo before I need the Herceptin drug early July. Im so upset that I still have to find the energy & time to fundraise $120,000.00, work full time & raise a family. Thank you for reading this.
Carol
From someone who has paid and received 12months of Herceptin I am totally opposed to the 9 week treatment option. The position for oncologists and for patients must be a very difficult one - do you advise 9 weeks if you believe 12 months is the better option and for the patient - what do you do? take 9 weeks for free and continually have in the back of your mind that 12 months was the best option and that overseas women are receiving 12 months for free or do you find the $s to pay privately for 12 months. At least I only had one decision - pay or don't pay and that was difficult enough. Mind you I suppose for those people who have no possibility of funding the drug, can receive at least 9 weeks - even though it may not prove to be the best option. The poor DHBs are also in a real predicament!!! Why cant the Government just make the decision to fund it like other countries have.
David Hutchison
My wife died of breast cancer. Whilst this treatment may not have saved her. The level of funding is scandalous and the way they are delaying/ have delayed funding has been reduced us to begging for peoples lives! or travelling overseas. These are woman, mothers with young children, and loving husbands partners, all of whom deserve a decent break! Perhaps all this money from speeding tickets and fines could be used to save some very worthwhile lives. Enough of this third world health care and waiting lists back the Herceptin for as long as the doctors tell us is necessary and save lives !
Heather Perry
I think tax paying woman in NZ deserve the 12-month course.
Jo Lewis
It is a start... but NZ women are definitely worth the full treatment. Price should be no obligation... where did the money from the waterfront stadium evaporate to?
Mary
It really is amazing that the government is more than happy to put up millions of dollars to fund a sports stadium in Auckland without hesitation. Yet when it comes to supplying cancer patients with Herceptin, there are delays as to whether or not this medication should be subsidised! This point alone demonstrates where the government's priorities lie, and it is certainly not in the health and well being of the citizens of this country!
Margaret Burton
A 12 month Herceptin course should be given to all women that have Breast Cancer or men as the case may be. Money should not be a deciding factor when it comes to health. Prevention is always better than the cure. With Herceptin their expectation of a "normal" life will be increased. There is supposed to be a Wellness Health in our country, but I sometimes wonder when it comes to spending the money to make it so.
Debra Blake
Nine weeks is not long enough. Must be fully funded. What good a surplus when our mothers are dying
Chris Walsh
As a woman with HER2 positive breast cancer, and been recommended by my oncologist to have a 12 month course of Herceptin, I am dismayed at the 9 week proposal by DHBs. This should be seen as exactly what it is, an attempt to go the cheap way an offer NZ women the least instead of best standard of care practised in 23 OECD countries. I am tired of the arguments put forward about how "others will miss out" if we fund this drug. Our drug budget is pathetic and we get 45 per cent of what the Australian population get. The complexities of this move by DHB's are not given justice in a one-sided article such as the one in your paper today. We deserve more.
Stephanie Ginns
I am upset to think that what it all comes down to is cost. How can any one person put a price on life? If I had breast cancer or if somone I knew had it I would expect all the possible treatment and not just a cost effective 9-month programme. What is 3 more months of treatment if it means one more mother, sister, wife, friend lives? The lose of these Woman is a too higher price to pay. Give them they 12 months!
Janet Macdonald
Should be a 12 month course.
Colin Graham
Why compromise womens health when the obvious preference is to give them the 12 month plan?
If the DHBs cant afford this $12m addition cost then the government must step in and cover the shortfall without compromising other areas. How much tax surplus do we need before we can give a little to humankind?
KLMatSalleh
Pharmac states that they base their funding decisions on the cost effectiveness of the drugs they are funding. I suggest that on the issue of Herceptin Pharmac put up or shut-up. Prove to the public (i.e. the taxpayers who actually fund health) that the 9 week course is actually cost effective. If it is not then they should not fund Herceptin at all.
Tim
NZ should produce a generic of Herceptin and tell the drug company to go screw itself over the patent.
Sue Ellis
I am absolutely against the nine-week treatment considered by the DHBs. The 12-month Herceptin regime is considered the international "gold standard" for care of women with HER2+ early breast cancer. It is the regime that is funded in 23 other countries and it is the regime that should be funded in NZ. I am sure if there was a call for funding for treatment of penile cancer, there would not be an issue, no matter what the cost!
Simone
Yes, I back it 100 per cent as I am sure all families affected by breast cancer in any way will back it. It should be fully funded, and it should be the 12-month course. Unbelievable how money can be found for sport, politicians wages, a new stadium and other non-life threatening situations but not to save the lives of the women of NZ.
Cara
Women should have the length of course required for their treatment. A group of us have been involved in trying to help fundraise for a friend and colleague whose Dr has told her she needs Herceptin. She and her partner (with child) have sold their house, and we have worked for months. She has to pay $6000 every 3 weeks for a year. Pretty hard when you cant even work to raise enough money to actually live on as well. We have raised enough for one payment after a lot of hard work. If the Government pays for 9 weeks that is 3 payments - a mere drop in the bucket for what she needs. Better than nothing, but not nearly enough.
Virginia Clayton
I am a New Zealand woman who has been living overseas for over 3 years. I am shocked and embarrassed at this decision, as it confirms to me that New Zealand has a 3rd world health system. This is not evidence based medicine - evidence based medicine would fund 12 months. I hope the people responsible in Pharmac and can live with their decision to take a gamble with the lives of 350 NZ women, and the other lives affected by their disease (their husbands, children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters....).
Sarah
I think it is truly appalling that DHB are concerned about money rather than health and that it has taken this long to get to this stage of "approval" for Herceptin. Pharmac has too much power at its disposal. It disgusts me that senior doctors were advising Pharmac to put the 12 month trial into action but were ignored by "management". Management. The word makes me sick.
Carolyn
We are not a third work country! Give our women what they need to save their lives. Listen to the senior doctors at least they are driven by a code of ethics not a bottom line!
