Patient Voice Aotearoa welcomes the comments made by the Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters on ‘The Project’ on Friday last week. Peters stated “Right now…we know we are not spending nearly enough on pharmaceuticals and first world drugs…the reality is that Pharmac’s budget is not big enough and we have to face that as a country and make some accommodations to give people the treatment and first world drugs that they deserve. We have a $7.5 billion surplus, so let’s take a look at Pharmac’s funding to ensure that people like that get the treatment they need, at the time that they need it.”

States Chair of Patient Voice Aotearoa, Malcolm Mulholland “Mr Peters comments regarding Pharmac is the first public admission by a senior member of the current New Zealand Government that Pharmac is severally underfunded. It has been one year to the day since the first two petitions were presented to fund the breast cancer drugs Ibrance and Kadcyla and we have been repeating ad nauseum for the duration of the year that Pharmac is underfunded and needs to be reformed. That is why this Government is facing a record number of over twenty petitions from patients who desperately need either medicine or a medical device funded.”

“We encourage all New Zealanders to give this Government the strongest message yet about the need to better fund and reform Pharmac by signing our petition. So far we’ve had over 12,000 people sign our online petition alone and that does not include those who have signed in person. This is a great start and we’ll keep pushing for more signatures before the petition is due to be presented in March next year."

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