Campaign challenges ‘abysmal’ medicine funding

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

A prominent health advocate says New Zealand needs to step up its game to address a medicine funding crisis that is forcing people to look offshore.

This week, Patient Voice Aotearoa chair Malcolm Mulholland began a 16-stop nationwide tour to launch Mylifematters, a campaign calling for increased medicine funding in Aotearoa.

Pushing a message that New Zealanders are “one diagnosis away from moving to Australia”, the collective is made up of more than 30 patient advocacy groups including Patient Voice Aotearoa, Cancer Society and Cystic Fibrosis NZ.

“We’re saying there is a medicine crisis in New Zealand, and we need to do a lot better, and our politicians need to act as well,” Mulholland said.

“It’s abysmal . . . We are the only country in the world that has a waiting list for the funding of medicines.”

Mr Mulholland says Pharmac — the Crown entity which decides which medicines are subsidised — is suffering from continued underinvestment.

If Pharmac had continued to be funded at rates comparable to those of 2007 — with population growth and inflation taken into account — it would have an extra $330 million at its disposal, he said.

Mylifematters says $417 million is required to clear a wait list of 109 medications Pharmac would like to fund.

“It’s a really sad indictment on successive governments, and I think it’s a blight on their human rights record.”

For Mr Mulholland, the healthcare issue is a personal one, having successfully fought prostate cancer after losing his late wife Wiki to breast cancer in 2021.

He will be joined at Gisborne’s event by local advocate Theresa Zame, who in June successfully petitioned the government to make changes to its Therapeutic Products Bill.

Mrs Zame  imports a medication called Tagrix from Bangladesh at a fraction of the cost of an unfunded local option, but the intitial wording of the bill prevented her from doing that moving forward.

She is now pushing for more medications to be funded, so that others won’t have to go to the same lengths she did to extend her life.

“Often you don’t get involved in something like this until it affects you, but people don’t realise how many people out there are truly affected,” she said.

“Not everyone can afford to get on an aeroplane. Not everyone can afford to import medication.

“We have a broken system. It needs to be addressed. Our most vulnerable people need to be looked after.”

Gisborne’s event will be held on Tuesday September 12 from 7pm - 8pm at House of Breakthrough.