Breast Cancer Patients Can’t Wait Afford To Wait For Their Life-Saving Drug

New Zealand’s inadequate medicines budget and Pharmac’s outdated operating model is under fire again, with Breast Cancer Foundation NZ calling for urgent access to a life-saving drug Pharmac has deemed worthy of funding. This comes as a breast cancer patient is set to tell a group of MPs about the impact of having to pay for her unfunded treatment.

Catherine Cooke, a 53-year-old mother and business owner from Auckland, was forced to list her family home and business, selling the business at a huge cost, and fundraise through Givealittle, to find more than $100,000 for Keytruda (pembrolizumab). Remarkably, an anonymous donor contributed $50,000 to Catherine’s Givealittle page in the hopes of bringing more attention to Catherine’s plight.

On 23 October, Catherine will make an oral submission to Parliament’s Petitions Committee on her petition, signed by more than 17,000 New Zealanders, asking for Keytruda to be funded for early-stage triple negative breast cancer. She’ll be joined by Breast Cancer Foundation NZ’s chief executive, Ah-Leen Rayner, and head of research and strategic programmes, Mehdi Shahbazpour.

Keytruda for early-stage triple negative breast cancer has just been added to Pharmac’s Options for Investment list, which means Pharmac has assessed the drug to be effective and cost efficient for this group of patients. But New Zealanders with this aggressive form of breast cancer are still no closer to accessing the treatment until Pharmac finds the money to pay for it.

“It’s a tragedy that Keytruda is instrumental for my survival, yet I’m facing financial ruin because it’s still out of reach,” Catherine says.

“The guilt of financially crippling my family and not being able to leave my children a legacy weigh heavily on me. I want to live a life where surviving breast cancer doesn’t mean losing everything else.”

Ah-Leen Rayner, chief executive of Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, says the Government must increase Pharmac’s budget and overhaul Pharmac’s approach to medicines to prevent avoidable deaths: “More than 100 drugs sit on Pharmac’s wish list, with countless New Zealanders desperately waiting to learn if they’ll ever be funded. Some of these drugs have been on this list for years and Kiwis with breast cancer can’t afford to wait.

“Right now, there are no funded treatment options specifically targeting Catherine’s type of breast cancer, which is more aggressive and has a higher risk of recurrence. Clinical trials show Keytruda is highly effective at preventing triple negative breast cancer from becoming incurable, and it’s widely available in more than 40 countries.

“Last year’s $604 million boost to Pharmac was welcome, but it’s all been used up and the need hasn’t gone away. Surely, when you have the very top of Pharmac asking for a billion dollars to give New Zealanders access to medicines, this tells you we can’t keep going on this way. We need a sustainable, long-term investment for medicines and an overhaul of how Pharmac assesses drugs because the failure to fund essential medicines is costing lives,” Rayner adds.

Breast Cancer Foundation NZ is urging the government to commit to a long-term funding model for new medicines and shift away from Pharmac’s overemphasis on cost-effectiveness so New Zealand can keep pace with modern treatment advances and effective drugs, including those already on the Options for Investment List, can be funded without further delay.

In an interview with the NZ Herald published on12 October, Pharmac’s chair, Paula Bennett, said: “I can blatantly disclose that I am the chair of Pharmac, and so can we please have a billion dollars more so that we can at least give New Zealanders access to medicines at the same rate as the rest of the countries? So that people don’t have to go to Australia and leave their families behind to get the level of service they deserve? It’s not all about money, but this actually is about our ability to purchase and buy enough.”

About Breast Cancer Foundation NZ (BCFNZ): 

BCFNZ is a not-for-profit, non-government funded organisation that depends on donations and fundraising for its work in breast cancer education and awareness, medical research and training grants, advocacy, and supporting Kiwis with breast cancer. BCFNZ’s programmes are evidence-based, and overseen by its medical advisory committee. The pink ribbon symbol is a trademark of BCFNZ.

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