High cost of a life-saving cure
Breast cancer rates are soaring – and the price of treatment is putting our health service under pressure. By Deena Coster and Bevan Hurley.
BREAST cancer rates among New Zealand women are rising at faster than predicted levels, and the increased demand for life-saving drugs has blown a hole in the budget of at least one district health board.
The latest available figures show 3301 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, 300 more than the Ministry of Health had projected.
In the Nelson-Marlborough region, the number of women seeking Herceptin, a drug which treats around one in five breast cancer sufferers, had doubled in the past 12 months.
Nationwide, the Government drug purchaser Pharmac says the number of patients being given Herceptin has increased 17 per cent to 937 in the last year, at a cost of an extra $5 million.
Breast cancer survivor Maddy Cooper credits Herceptin with helping to save her life.
She was just 27 and was preparing to go on a belated honeymoon when she was diagnosed after doctors noticed a suspicious lump in her breast in 2014.
Cooper recalls how within two weeks, she was scheduled for a seven hour surgery – a skin sparing mastectomy removing the tissue of her right breast and a flap reconstruction.
‘‘The first few days post surgery were a painful, surreal blur with tubes and dressing sticking out in all directions.’’
After surgery, Cooper, a public
I never made it on the honeymoon nor did my marriage survive the challenge but despite the odds I am happier and more grateful now than ever before.’ MADDY COOPER
relations professional, faced six months of chemotherapy, followed by a year and a half of of Herceptin, a drug which treats the HER2 positive form of breast cancer.
‘‘I felt like I was in the prime of my life with so much potential and opportunity. Looking in the mirror at a bald, pale, sickly reflection with a massive scar across my back and an implant where my breast had once been was the hardest psychological thing I have ever had to deal with.
‘‘I never made it on the honeymoon nor did my marriage survive the challenge but despite the odds I am happier and more grateful now than ever before.’’
Now 30, and in remission, Cooper recommends anyone eligible should take Herceptin. ‘‘It has been shown to dramatically reduce the risk of cancer coming back with little side effects so to me it’s a no-brainer.’’
Breast cancer is more common in older women and risk factors included alcohol consumption and ‘Western lifestyles’’.
But even when the aging population had been factored in, the rise in breast cancer cases was ‘‘concerning’’ and higher than expected, according to the Breast Cancer Foundation.
Communications manager Adele Gautier said: ‘‘Unfortunately there’s not one factor we can point to – you can take two women with identical lifestyles, and one of them will get breast cancer while the other doesn’t.
‘‘It’s hard to say why the rate is still going up, except it’s believed that Western lifestyles play a significant part (immigrants from Asia and other areas with low breast cancer rates typically find their rates go up as generations adapt to Western lifestyles).
‘‘If diagnoses continue at a rate ahead of forecast, our health system must step up to meet that need, which of course is going to cost more.’’
Herceptin costs between $70,000 and $120,000 per patient annually, and can help to treat around a fifth of people suffering from breast and stomach cancer by attacking a protein that causes cancer cells.
Across the four DHBs that service the greater Auckland and Northland area, the cost of Herceptin use had increased by 23 per cent to $10 million in the past eight months.
Dr Richard Sullivan, Auckland DHB oncologist and Deputy Chief Medical Officer, says that more breast cancer patients across the Northern region are being treated more quickly.
Breast Cancer Foundation spokeswoman Adele Gautier said Herceptin has made a huge difference to the survivability of HER2+ breast cancer, which is an aggressive form of the disease, and affects 15-20 per cent of women diagnosed.