Nigel Latta was diagnosed with cancer late last year.
Nigel Latta was diagnosed with cancer late last year.
Six months after publicly revealing his “incurable” cancer diagnosis to the nation, Nigel Latta has said he’s responded well to cancer treatment and is no longer terminally ill. What exactly are the drugs that Latta says helped save his life?
In September 2024, Latta shared a video on social media revealing doctors had discovered an “inoperable” tumour in his stomach, explaining how he reacted and came to terms with the sobering news.
But despite doctors giving Latta a prognosis of between six and 12 months at the time, the 57-year-old author and broadcaster took to Facebook on March 16 to share some “fundamentally very, very good news”.
Recording a video message for followers, Latta said he’d “responded very well” to chemotherapy treatment and hasn’t been affected “as badly as some people”.
“I can take a whole bunch of wonder drugs and the wonder drugs are working,” Latta said in the video, adding that chemotherapy helped his stomach tumour disappear and that he is able to continue taking the cancer drugs permanently.
Latta did not disclose what drugs were prescribed to him in the video.
“For me, I’m that guy who got given the terrible prognosis but I’m going to be around for a long time,” he said. “My horizon now is years, and years in the future because it is all looking very well.”
Latta has since told the Herald that the “wonder drugs” he attributes to his miraculous recovery are Folfiri (5-FU + leucovorin + irinotecan) and ramucirumab.
While Folfiri is a publicly funded chemotherapy treatment in New Zealand, ramucirumab – a monoclonal antibody medication – is not.
Latta said he knows all too well about the problems plaguing cancer drug funding in New Zealand, making particular note of the inequities many Kiwis face in access to potentially lifesaving treatment.
“Some of these [treatments] are like $6000 every two weeks,” Latta told the Herald. “There are lots of people where there are drugs there that can help them, but they just can’t take them”.
Nigel Latta says he is now cancer-free after responding "very well" to treatment.
“It’s a lot of money,” Latta added, drawing comparisons with his own experience recently undergoing radiotherapy.
“I had radiotherapy with a thing called Sabr 2, which I can get because I have health insurance, but for people that are in the public system, they can’t even get access,” Latta said.
“If you’re in the private system, you get this incredibly targeted radiotherapy tool which ... can literally just black the tumour and nothing else.
“But if you’re in the public system, you still get radiotherapy, but it’s bigger, broader, does more damage, has more risk.
