{"id":365,"date":"2019-08-07T22:40:39","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T22:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clladvocates.phillipsandphillips.nz\/?p=365"},"modified":"2019-09-12T01:16:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T01:16:17","slug":"health-select-committee-hears-pleas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/?p=365","title":{"rendered":"Health Select Committee hears pleas from survivors and sufferers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><p>[vc_row row_height_percent=&#8221;0&#8243; override_padding=&#8221;yes&#8221; h_padding=&#8221;2&#8243; top_padding=&#8221;3&#8243; bottom_padding=&#8221;3&#8243; overlay_alpha=&#8221;50&#8243; gutter_size=&#8221;3&#8243; column_width_percent=&#8221;100&#8243; shift_y=&#8221;0&#8243; z_index=&#8221;0&#8243;][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/1&#8243;][vc_custom_heading heading_semantic=&#8221;h1&#8243; text_size=&#8221;h1&#8243;]Health Select Committee hears pleas from survivors and sufferers[\/vc_custom_heading][vc_column_text]<strong>This story was originally sourced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/396193\/health-select-committee-hears-pleas-from-survivors-and-sufferers\">here from RNZ<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BSkKN7w7hFc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Politicians heard emotional pleas today from cancer survivors, people with disabilities and health agencies to boost Pharmac&#8217;s funding for life saving drugs.<\/p>\n<p>Petitions were presented to the Health Select Committee at Parliament &#8211; calling on medicines to be funded &#8211; including for breast, lung, ovarian cancers, along with multiple myeloma.<\/p>\n<p>Emily Beswick and her daughter, Stella, travelled 500 kilometres from Cambridge to today&#8217;s select committee.<\/p>\n<p>Stella has spinal muscular atrophy and uses a wheelchair.<\/p>\n<p>She sat quietly at the back of the select committee room &#8211; listening &#8211; smiling from time to time.<\/p>\n<p>While medication to help her condition is available overseas &#8211; here in New Zealand &#8211; it&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>And for Ms Beswick that&#8217;s devastating.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We feel that all hope is gone &#8211; we have been waiting 13 years for a treatment to arrive and now that it&#8217;s finally here &#8211; it is out of reach,&#8221; she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Spinal muscular atrophy is a childhood version of motor neurone disease but the drugs to halt it are not funded here.<\/p>\n<p>MS Beswick said her daughter&#8217;s quality of life could be improved.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Graham has been in remission from chronic lymphocytic leukemia for five years.<\/p>\n<p>He broke down as he told the select committee he was given compassionate access to a drug that probably saved his life.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Since then, I&#8217;ve been working, making a useful contribution to society, paying taxes and having a full and enjoyable existence,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Mr Graham said the Pharmac model needed to change.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Current Pharmac processing of applications for approval for cancer medications take almost two years &#8211; and if you&#8217;re dying of cancer &#8211; that&#8217;s just not acceptable,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Joy Wilkie is in remission from the blood cancer myeloma.<\/p>\n<p>No new anti-myeloma medicines have been funded here in the last five years.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;When I relapse &#8211; and I know I will &#8211; our world class clinicians know what best international treatment I need to give me more years of meaningful life,&#8221; she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Pharmac wasn&#8217;t available for an interview and it did not did not appear at the select committee today.<\/p>\n<p>In statement, it said funding decisions take time and it is aware that not everyone has time on their side.<\/p>\n<p>But late this afternoon, it announced on its website a proposal to fund Kadcyla for some breast cancer patients, Alectinib for lung cancer and Ocrelizumab for multiple sclerosis from 1 December.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, a Cancer Action Plan is expected to be announced by Health Minister David Clark later this month.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians heard emotional pleas today from cancer survivors, people with disabilities and health agencies to boost Pharmac\u2019s funding for life saving drugs.<\/p>\n<p>Petitions were presented to the Health Select Committee at Parliament \u2013 calling on medicines to be funded \u2013 including for breast, lung, ovarian cancers, along with multiple myeloma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/four_col_clark_walk.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}