Gill Ripley is self-funding Keytruda for her breast cancer, not covered by Pharmac. Budget 2024 extends free breast screening, but lacks funding for 13 new cancer drugs. Cancer Society calls for urgent reform to improve NZ’s low OECD medicine access ranking.
A cancer patient is disappointed with a lack of funding for new medicines in Budget 2024 , and expects it will be years until the drug that helped her stay alive is funded by Pharmac. National campaigned on funding, from this year, 13 cancer treatments available in Australia, but these were not announced as part of Budget 2024. Gill Ripley is paying for the immunotherapy drug Keytruda to treat her breast cancer.
The drug is not one of the 13 cancer medicines identified by National, but the fact that even those have not been funded makes Ripley believe there’s little hope access to Keytruda or other vital drugs will be funded any time soon. “It is probably a really long way down the list. So Keytruda will not be available for breast cancer patients in New Zealand for many years to come.
It is really disappointing.” Ripley was positive about another initiative funded in Budget 2024 - the extension of free breast screening to women up to age 74. The current free screening age range is 45 to 69.
* Follow live updates on Budget 2024 here This will be in a staged approach and require $24 million in operational funding over the next four years and a further $7.2m in capital funding over 10 years. An extra 40,000 mammogra.
