$60m Pharmac funding injection

‘‘Pharmac can’t continue to lead the world when it’s cash-strapped.’’ Labour’s David Clark

An extra $60 million to fund new medicines will let drug purchaser Pharmac widen the cache of treatments available for lung cancer and HIV sufferers.

The country’s drug agency is also looking to buy treatment for insomnia, it was announced as Health Minister Jonathan Coleman unveiled a record government funding boost to widen New Zealanders’ access to expensive new medicines.

Pharmac has began public consultations on a drug package designed to benefit more than 33,000 New Zealanders, including 21,500 children.

Its new ‘‘anti-infectives suite’’ should be available from July 1, and include Roxithromycinin tablets in dispersible form for children under 12.

This scheme will allow up to 21,500 children to safely take this antibiotic, offer earlier access to four HIV anti-retrovirals for some 3000 Kiwis, and release a new drug to treat lung disease in children for longer. The latter will benefit around 350 kids.

The $60m cash injection for Pharmac would be spread over four years, Coleman said.

It comes a year after the Government gave a record funding boost of $124m, over four years, at the last Budget, following a heated public battle over the access to new biological drugs to treat melanoma. Coleman’s announcement yesterday is on top of the funds already promised last year.

District health boards would fund $11m of that per year, as normal – though Labour health spokesman David Clark said they would have to cut services to cope.

The funding boost would give Pharmac an extra $20m over the 2017/18 year. Its total budget for that financial year would be a record $870m, Coleman said – up by $220m since 2008.

Clark said the new funding was welcome. ‘‘But it’s unfortunate that already cash-strapped DHBs are being asked to further cut services to part-fund this increased funding.’’

Their portion of the funding was sliced off the total DHB budget every year, he said, for Pharmac to purchase medicines on behalf of those health boards. The amount each DHB had to pay had not increased.

He also claimed funding for Pharmac had been ‘‘virtually frozen over the last four years’’. Prior to last year’s increase, it had been.

‘‘Pharmac can’t continue to lead the world when it’s cashstrapped. In order to provide medicines comparable to other firstworld countries, it requires more resources.’’

Pharmac chief executive Steffan Crausaz said the agency worked to ensure all New Zealanders had access to a wide range of best-value treatments.

‘‘We’ve included proposals to make better use of existing treatments – changes that are often suggested by prescribers to remove administrative hurdles for treating their patients.’’

Coleman said in the last two years, more than 109,000 people had benefited from 62 newly subsidised or ‘‘widened access’’ medicines.

Each year, around 3.5 million New Zealanders take a drug that is funded by the agency.