Cancer Control Agency to recommend funding up to 12 blood cancer treatments

When National committed to fund 13 more cancer medicines on the election campaign it made another promise - that blood cancer patients were “not forgotten”.

The promise to fund 13 more cancer medicines was based on a Cancer Control Agency report which compared New Zealand’s access to cancer treatments to Australia’s but it only covered solid tumour cancers.

Then National health spokesperson, now Health Minister Shane Reti, said at the time blood cancer patients would not be overlooked - that they just needed an equivalent report.

“We have not forgotten you… but where we are now is that the Cancer Control Agency hasn’t done the piece of work as they have with the solid tumours, to be able to give us that guidance as to what those treatment gaps are.

“So again, we are sending out a signal to the people with myeloma and the people with leukaemia, we understand, we haven’t forgotten you, we just need that piece of work to be done by the Cancer Control Agency.”

The Cancer Control Agency is set to publish its blood cancer report on Friday, Stuff understands.

It is understood the report will find 24 blood cancer medicines which treat 42 different cancer types are funded in Australia but not New Zealand - and 12 of those 42 have been identified to provide substantial clinical benefit.

Pharmac Minister David Seymour says he will apply the same standard to Reti’s blood cancer promise that he did to the initial promise of 13.

“The Government is not committed to funding any particular drug unless Pharmac chooses to fund it under its formula,” he told Stuff.

The promise to fund 13 particular cancer medicines turned into a political nightmare for National once in government as it clashed with Pharmac’s independent model.

Pharmac operates within a set budget, leaving it with a list of drugs it would like to fund if it had the money. This is called the “options for investment list”.

There are currently 132 applications on the list.

These applications are ranked in order of what Pharmac would like to fund first, but the ranking is kept secret so as not to undermine Pharmac’s negotiating ability with pharmaceutical companies.

To navigate this while maintaining independence, the Government ended up having to more than triple the amount of funding it budgeted to ensure that the funding covered all the medicines it promised - as well as those ranked ahead of them on the list.

The report was expected to be finished by the end of June. Last month, the Cancer Control Agency told Stuff a summary report was sent to the health minister in July, while the final report was set to be released mid-October.

Seymour was cautious not to make the same commitment National had.

“If there was a report from the Cancer Control Agency that said giving more money to Pharmac for medicines would have a specific benefit we’d definitely look at that but I think we have to be really clear that we’re giving Pharmac record budgets. They’re the ones that make the decisions because they have the expertise and we should keep that away from politics and I certainly just hope that the conclusions they come to will give a result for people with blood cancers.”

When asked if he would seek more funding to ensure the drugs recommended by the report were funded, Seymour didn’t specifically commit to that.

“I’m currently working with Pharmac to work up a budget bid to increase the amount of money but our focus really is on showing the other ministers in the government that if they give more money to Pharmac for medicines we can save the government money elsewhere.”

Patient Voice Aotearoa’s Malcolm Mulholland is urging the government to fulfil Reti’s pledge.

“Failure to fund these medicines would be a broken political promise of the worst kind. Lives will be lost,” he said.

“Blood cancer patients have been waiting months for this report to be released. They now want to know how long they will have to wait for Pharmac to fund these medicines.”

Reti was out of the country and unavailable for an interview, but his office sent a statement which did not commit to further funding.

“Our Government is incredibly proud of this year’s transformative investment in cancer treatments, including for blood cancers.

“The $604m funding boost for Pharmac announced in June has enabled an overall package of up to 54 more new medicines, and will change the lives of thousands of New Zealand cancer patients and their families.

“We recognise the hard work of the Cancer Control Agency in providing oversight of cancer in New Zealand. The chief executive of the agency has previously briefed the Minister of Health around publication of this year’s report, and Dr Reti has received it with interest.”

- Stuff