Pharmac To Fund Medicines For Blood Cancers, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Eczema And Arthritis

More New Zealanders will have access to medicines for blood cancers, bowel diseases, eczema and arthritis, following Pharmac’s decision to widen access to four medicines for six health conditions from 1 May 2025.

The medicines and health conditions are:

• venetoclax (brand name Venclexta) in combination with azacitidine or cytarabine for a type of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukaemia
• azacitidine (brand name Azacitidine Dr Reddy’s) for acute myeloid leukaemia
• ibrutinib (brand name Imbruvica) for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia
• upadacitinib (brand name Rinvoq) for atopic dermatitis (eczema), ulcerative colitis, Crohn disease, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Pharmac currently funds venetoclax for a different type of blood cancer called chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, and funds upadacitinib for some people with rheumatoid arthritis. Azacitidine is currently funded for other types of blood cancer.

“We’re making these treatments available for more people. We estimate that 1200 New Zealanders will benefit from widened access to these medicines in the first year of funding, with 5,070 people benefiting per year after five years” says Pharmac’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr David Hughes.

“Widening access to these medicines will have a huge impact on the people who need them, but will also have benefits for the wider health system,” Hughes says.

Widened access to upadacitinib will reduce the need for Health NZ infusion services, reducing infusion times by 4,000 hours in the first year of funding.

Hughes says Pharmac have widened access to these medicines through a bundle agreement with the supplier, AbbVie.

“Our team have negotiated a great deal with AbbVie. Alongside making venetoclax and upadacitinib available to more New Zealanders at a reduced net price, our teams have also negotiated price reductions for two already funded medicines - a medicine used to treat Hepatitis C, and a medicine to treat inflammatory conditions.

“These savings enable us to maximise the use of our medicines budget to fund more treatments for New Zealanders,” says Hughes. 

Pharmac has made several changes in response to feedback received from clinicians, patient support and advocacy groups and patients, including changing the access criteria so that people privately funding these medicines can transition to publicly funded treatment, provided the same eligibility criteria were met prior to starting treatment.

“I want to thank everyone who took the time to provide us with feedback during our consultation. Your views are important to us and affect our decisions,” Hughes says.

Pharmac can consider widening access to these medicines following the Government’s $604 million medicine budget increase in June 2024.

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