1 October marks the first day a range of new medicines, including cancer medicines, will start to become available in hospitals and health centres across New Zealand.
The Ministry of Health is one of the agencies tasked with ensuring New Zealanders can readily access new and widened medicines as part of the Government’s $604 million investment in medicines over four years.
The other agencies are Pharmac, Health New Zealand and Te Aho o Te Kahu, the Cancer Control Agency.
Read more about the rollout of these new medicines in the joint media release on Health New Zealand’s website.
Video
Dr Diana Sarfati, the Director-General of Health, talks about the rollout of the new medicines.
Transcript
[Dr Diana Sarfati to camera]
Tēnā koutou katoa.
I'm Diana Sarfati, the Director General of Health.
As many of you know, this year the government announced an uplift in Pharmac funding, which meant that we were able to fund an additional, something like 26 new cancer medicines and about the same number again, of other medicines.
What's exciting about this week is we’re seeing the very first of the cancer medicines being rolled out.
[Image showing Keytruda (Pembrolizumab) packaging]
It's a medicine called Pembrolizumab, and it's going to be used for a range of cancers, including bowel cancers, breast cancers, a type of blood cancer. It's very exciting that those medicines are becoming available and over the next few months and year, we'll be able to see additional cancer medicines and other medicines coming on board.
[Image showing logos of the Health New Zealand, Pharmac, Ministry of Health and Te Aho o Te Kahu, the Cancer Control Agency]
This has been the result of work right across the sector, with Health New Zealand, with Pharmac, with the Ministry of Health, with Te Aho o Te Kahu, the Cancer Control Agency.
There's work going on behind the scenes to build up our workforce, to build up our services, to be able to deliver these new medicines. It's exciting for patients, it's exciting for whānau, and it's a real delight for me, particularly given my background in cancer, and having been the Chief Executive of the Cancer Control Agency, I'm particularly excited to see this progress being made.
Also, want to give a shout out to Medsafe, who's doing some fantastic work in terms of shortening the time that it takes to get new cancer medicines registered. Fantastic work all round.
[Short clip showing the Pharmac webpage that lists the new medicines]
I'd really encourage you to go and have a look at the Pharmac website to see all the range of medicines that are coming online. It's going to make a real difference to many thousands of New Zealanders.
