Expat doctors and Researchers Deliver Stark Reality to New Zealand Prime Minister
New Zealand’s drug access means Kiwis with blood cancer have worse survival and outcomes than elsewhere in the world. Coordinating Kiwi-Australian, Professor Judith Trotman, said, “NZ is not funding drugs, with a cascading effect on patient lives, doctors’ morale and drug development. Patients are being lost to their disease and doctors lost to overseas.”
Key Points from the Letter to New Zealand’s Prime Minister
The letter to the New Zealand Prime Minister, and Ministers for Health and Pharmac, made comment on the lack of drug access and the impact on the blood cancer community. Key points are:
- There are over 100 different blood cancers: most are rare cancers
- Blood cancers cannot be prevented with public health measures or surgically removed
- In the last two decades, there has been a global transformation in effective, well tolerated, targeted therapies for most blood cancers, doubling survival
- With chronic underfunding of Pharmac, the lives of blood cancer patients are disproportionately affected as they cannot access these new lifesaving, life-changing medicines
- Most New Zealanders with blood cancers are dying unnecessarily – a few are travelling, or staying overseas, to access often self-funded therapy
- A failure to access even standard of care medicines is prohibiting NZ patients’ and haematologists’ access to clinical trials of even more promising novel therapies
- The moral injury caused to haematology professionals is driving many to careers overseas, to access the essential tools of their trade and effectively treat patients with blood cancers: delivering longer, better lives
- The letter included a series of case studies of the impact of delayed drug access
The 35 haematology expats proposed immediate action:
- Establish a funding trajectory for Pharmac to deliver standard of care blood cancer medicines to levels of comparable OECD nations
- Engage in an urgent roundtable and establish a local Taskforce of government and haematology experts, including consumers, to create a roadmap for an agile, high performing health system to deliver blood cancer care
- Minimal funding support to enable NZ’s participation in the Australasian Leukaemia Lymphoma Group (ALLG) investigator-initiated clinical trial program
ALLG CEO Delaine Smith
New Zealand Approval Delays Access to Clinical Trial Opportunities
New Zealand’s ongoing delayed approval process for new medicines is leaving Kiwis without access to clinical trial research opportunities. The Letter to the Prime Minster was endorsed by ALLG, with Chief Executive Officer Delaine Smith saying, “the delay in availability of evidence-based medicines means that New Zealanders are unable to join many important clinical trials. Clinical trials frequently require the standard treatment to be readily available as the comparator.
Unfortunately in New Zealand many trials do not become available for patients with blood cancer simply because the standard treatments are not routinely available in the same way they are available elsewhere in the world.”
About the ALLG
The Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group (ALLG) is the only not-for-profit clinical trial organisation in Australian and New Zealand that sponsors local investigator-initiated clinical trials. The ALLG membership of clinicians is made up of almost all of the haematologists treating leukaemia and lymphoma across Australia and New Zealand. The ALLG plans, designs, conducts, monitors and publishes investigator initiated clinical trials.
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