Top cancer drugs out of reach

Dr Peter Moodie

Pharmac warns that the Government will have to increase its drugs budget more than planned if public patients are to be given new and more effective cancer treatments.

Funding expensive drugs such as Herceptin would be "one of Pharmac's biggest challenges", the agency's medical director, Dr Peter Moodie, said yesterday.

Herceptin, hailed as a potential cure for breast cancer, costs $60,000 to $120,000 a patient a year and the brain cancer drug Temodar costs $50,000 or more.

"If we are to make these treatments available then it is essential that we budget for them, or make savings in other areas," Dr Moodie said in Pharmac's annual review.

He said later that this might mean increasing the Government's drugs budget, not funding some other drugs, or ensuring Pharmac was obtaining drugs for the lowest prices possible.

Decisions about the expensive drugs would enforce prioritisation (rationing) of scarce resources, he said.

Pharmac already funds Herceptin for women with advanced breast cancer, but has not yet received an application to extend funding to those with early-stage disease - cancer which has not spread beyond the lymph nodes of the armpit.

Early results from clinical trials show it reduces the risk of cancer recurrence by 46 per cent after surgery in women with the early stage of an aggressive form of cancer named HER2 positive after one of the proteins involved.

A leading American medical journal said Herceptin "may be even a cure".

An estimated 150 patients a year pay for their own cancer drug treatment because the newer therapies recommended by their oncologists are not state-funded; as many again rely on health insurance to pay.

Aucklander Aletia Hudson, 33, is paying $34,000 for post-surgery chemotherapy for breast cancer, with help from fundraising by her film industry colleagues and from a planned auction of art works donated by friends.

Her cancer specialist recommended Herceptin in addition to the chemo, but she does not fit the Pharmac criteria and cannot afford to pay for it.

"Today I have been in tears, I have abused someone.

"It is highly stressful. I'm so concerned about money.

"I feel really unsupported by the Government," said Miss Hudson, who was working as a camera operator's assistant until her illness and has recently become engaged.

Health Minister Pete Hodgson said last night Herceptin was producing remarkable results but he could give no preview on next year's Budget.

Breast Cancer Foundation spokesman Associate Professor Vernon Harvey, a cancer specialist, said New Zealand fell behind other Western countries in state-funded access to the latest cancer drugs during the 1990s but caught up in 2001.

Major medical developments had occurred since. "So once again I guess we are falling behind."


Drug costs
* Cancer drugs cost the Government about $40 million a year.
* Widening access to breast cancer wonder drug Herceptin could add $30 million.
* Health systems worldwide are quaking at the prospect of funding Herceptin and other expensive cancer drugs.