Expanded access to Herceptin 'a relief'

Melissa Murphy with her children (left to right) Gabrielle, 9, Josiah, 4, Shannon, 11 and Kimberley, 7. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Breast cancer patient Melissa Murphy and her supporters will save $39,000 from the Government's expanded access to the medicine Herceptin.

"It's such a relief. It has come at the right time," Mrs Murphy, an Auckland mother of four children aged 4 to 11, said yesterday after the announcement by Prime Minister John Key and Health Minister Tony Ryall.

Diagnosed a year ago, she had surgery, chemotherapy and a nine-week course of Herceptin in the public health system before going private to top up Herceptin treatment to a year.

Twelve months is the standard use of the drug internationally for early stage HER 2-positive breast cancer, but state agency Pharmac and district health boards decided this was not cost-effective, and last year offered nine weeks of treatment instead. Costs vary, but before the nine-week funding, some women had to pay more than $100,000 for a year's treatment.

Yesterday, the new National-led Government fulfilled its election promise to provide the 12-month course and has backdated that to the day it took office, November 19, meaning women will be reimbursed for treatments they have received since then.

Mrs Murphy, 44, will have 17 infusions of Herceptin in total. Three were in the public system and she has had five privately - the last one since November 19 - leaving nine more to be state-funded.

The bill for the private clinic and medicine was to be $55,000. Some $20,000 of this has been spent, but this will reduce to just over $16,000 after the last treatment cycle is reimbursed.

With the help of family, friends, a fund-raising group and Mrs Murphy's church, the Encounter Christian Centre, $36,000 was available for her private treatment.

"If the announcement didn't come through, I would be running out of money in February and would need to start thinking about fundraising."

But after becoming very sick from the chemotherapy, she did not have the energy for fundraising and even had to stop home-schooling her children, putting them into school last term.

She and her husband Stuart, an IT engineer, had investigated the nine-week and 12-month treatments.

"We decided I needed to do what I can to be here for my family, especially as I have got four young children."

Now it would be up to the church what to do with the remaining money that had been raised. Mrs Murphy said it might go to a cancer charity or into church-building.

Under yesterday's announcement, women like Mrs Murphy part-way through treatment can switch to public hospitals for fully state-paid care or continue to pay for care at a private clinic and have only the drug funded by taxpayers. Others who had only nine weeks, or who stopped before 12 months, may be able to have the balance of a 12-month course publicly, if their specialist agrees.