March 24, 2023
Favoured access to diabetes drug
A health advocate is concerned a controversial decision to give Māori and Pasifika with diabetes preferential access to new, more expensive, drug treatments is more about rationing than equity.
Some health experts say the 2021 decision by Pharmac is addressing health inequality.
But Malcolm Mulholland from Patient Voice Aotearoa, a senior researcher at Massey University’s School of Māori Studies, Pharmac may have underestimated the number of people who need the drugs.
“I wouldn’t like to see Māori being used as a whipping boy, as a rationing tool if you like – whereby they restrict the use only for Māori and not for other parts of the population. I think that would be a very unfortunate situation to be in,” he says.
Dr Mulholland says some of the drugs have been around for several years, and Pharmac has been painfully slow to fund them.