Posted by Michael Wonder on 09 Sep 2020
New diabetes drug funding format is “unethical”
10 September 2020 - An organisation which has campaigned to change the drugs used in New Zealand to treat type 2 diabetes says PHARMAC’s announcement today of limited funding for the ‘new’ drugs leaves at least 200,000 patients on a regime now only practiced in the third world.
Chairperson of the Diabetes Foundation Aotearoa, Dr John Baker, is upset that PHARMAC won’t replace the standard of care, and instead forces desperate patients and clinicians to apply for ‘special authority’ to use any of three new classes of drugs (each is at least 15 years old).
“It is unethical to withhold these medicines, now standard across the first world, and keep four out of five patients on a regimen that makes their lives unbearable or short.
