Leukaemia advocacy group to tell Health Select Committee NZ’s current cancer drug funding scheme is a ‘national disgrace’

Dr Neil Graham, founder and executive director of CLL Advocates NZ, a new patient support group for New Zealanders with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL), will appear before the Health Select Committee today in support of their submission to fund life-saving treatments for suffers of CLL.

The Health Select Committee hearing follows the CLL Advocates NZ’s petition, signed by over 1,000 New Zealanders, fighting for funding of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and venetoclax (Venclexta™).

Neil Graham is calling on the members of the Select Committee to strongly recommend the funding of these two life-saving treatments, to prevent the unnecessary deaths of New Zealanders with the aggressive form of this cancer.

“These treatments are widely funded in many similar countries to NZ, such as Australia, Canada, UK, and Scandinavia, where many lives have been saved. They are not funded in NZ however, and most patients in NZ are unable to afford their cost. As a result, New Zealanders are dying unnecessarily from lack of access to these medications. Those who can pay live, those who can’t die.” said Dr Graham.

Dr Graham is also asking the Select Committee to urgently review the Pharmac model which is patently unable to accommodate the new wave of drugs.

“It is a national disgrace. The current Pharmac model for cancer medication funding is no longer appropriate for providing modern life-saving cancer treatment. It needs to be changed. Funding applications to Pharmac for cancer medications currently take almost two years to be processed. For people dying of cancer, this is woefully too long” said Dr Graham.

Dr Graham, who is living with CLL, had compassionate access to one of these drugs, ibrutinib, and nearly five years later continues to work and live life to the full. He says Pharmac’s continuing refusal to fund the drug is not only a death sentence for New Zealanders with aggressive CLL, but flies in the face of international clinical opinion and best practice.

“Ibrutinib has been registered in NZ since 2015, and is funded in 44 of 45 countries of similar or lower wealth, NZ being the exception. Evidence for the effectiveness of this treatment is incontrovertible, for example overall survival for patients on ibrutinib at first line is 88%. It’s hard to imagine why the evidence that was so compelling for 44 other countries has not persuaded Pharmac to the same position,” said Dr Graham.

Dr Graham will also be joined by Dr Ben Schrader and Dr Rob Weinkove to present in support of this submission.