May 2, 2024
“When you’re offered the chance to prolong the time your children will spend with their father, there really is no choice. But in this country, the costs of treatment make this choice impossible,” says Bowel Cancer NZ patient advocate Emma Purchase (pictured right), who spoke at the opening of the two-day New Zealand Medicine Access Summit in Parliament.
Her husband, Chris, was diagnosed in 2018 with stage 4 bowel cancer and died in 2020 leaving behind Emma and their two young children.
The last time Emma stood up and spoke about her husband was at his funeral. On Monday, 29 April, in front of MPs and specialists in the health sector, she told Chris’s story and the vital drugs that are not funded in this country. Drugs that inevitably could have meant Chris’s children had more time with their dad.
“To give him a chance to prolong his life, his oncologist suggested an immunotherapy treatment, an unfunded drug that would cost us $66,000 for a year of treatment. At this point we were penniless,” says Emma.
“It is impossible not to look back on this time and wonder, what if? What if we hadn’t had to run a fundraising campaign alongside everything else as he was dying? Would those last few months have been easier?
I’m here today because I hope that all these “what ifs” might help others… The drug that could have helped Chris is publicly funded in 52 other countries, including Australia, Venezuela, Colombia, Libya and Greece.”
Emma’s speech brought tears to the eyes of people in the room, including the newly appointed chair of Pharmac, Paula Bennett.
After Emma spoke, Associate Health Minister David Seymour took the stand and announced that the government would give Pharmac an additional $1.7 billion in funding.
However, this increase of roughly $450m more per year will only enable Pharmac to continue access to the drugs it currently funds and does not extend to the 13 new treatments promised during the election. The Minister couldn’t commit to funding all 13 drugs in the upcoming Budget, which will be released on May 30.
This announcement is a step in the right direction but is meaningless for bowel cancer patients and families like Emma. Currently, NO new bowel cancer drugs have been funded by Pharmac in over 20 years.
We continue our advocacy with Patient Voice Aotearoa, and our nurse, Victoria, is in Wellington at the Summit representing Bowel Cancer NZ (pictured left). Oncologist Dr Damianovich, our medical adviser, also spoke on Monday morning, calling for bowel cancer patients to get the vital new drugs they need.