Samantha Donovan:\u00a0Breast cancer and endometriosis patients have been given just a few months’ notice of the removal of a crucial drug from the Australian market. The drugs maker AstraZeneca says it’s withdrawing the product for commercial reasons. But a higher dose of the drug will remain available in Australia for prostate cancer patients. Isabel Moussalli reports.<\/p>\n
Isabel Moussalli: Breast cancer patients are scared and furious.<\/p>\n
Kate Hardman: The injection helping keep me alive is being discontinued.<\/p>\n
Isabel Moussalli: Mother of three Kate Hardman has been updating her social media followers on her stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. She can’t believe a drug she’s been using for three years will soon disappear from Australian shelves.<\/p>\n
Kate Hardman: I haven’t yet spoken to my oncologist who I know will guide me and help me come up with a plan. But that doesn’t stop me being terrified. And truthfully, it also makes me angry. Why remove a medication that is working? A medication that is helping people stay alive? It feels like yet again a price is being put on our life.<\/p>\n
Isabel Moussalli: Meagan Fisher visited her oncologist this morning and was told she’ll have to wait and see what her treatment options are.<\/p>\n
Meagan Fisher: So my treatment has been and still is after two and a half years is a combination of targeted treatment and hormone treatment. So Zoladex is a part of that hormone treatment for me. I absolutely think it’s a part of medicine that’s keeping me alive, yeah.<\/p>\n
Isabel Moussalli: From November, the 3.6 milligram dose of Zoladex will no longer be available in the Australian private market and under the PBS. But a higher dose will stay, which is used for prostate cancer treatment. In a statement, a spokesperson for the company AstraZeneca said it’s working to provide free access to the lower dose for six months for those without alternative treatment pathways. Health Department official Duncan McIntyre was questioned yesterday at Senate Estimates.<\/p>\n
Duncan McIntyre: We’ve been in discussions with AstraZeneca and a range of other companies about the retention. But the company has advised that they are removing that item from a number of markets, including Australia, and that that’s been a commercial decision. For further information about the reasons that have driven that, you’d have to talk to the company. But it’s not just Australia that’s been affected by this withdrawal.<\/p>\n
Isabel Moussalli: It’s estimated that about 7,000 breast cancer patients rely on this drug in Australia. Dr Wanda Tsui is a medical oncologist at the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre, where hundreds of their patients are being treated with Zoladex.<\/p>\n
Wanda Cui: And essentially it’s used for two main reasons in women with breast cancer. The first is for ovarian function suppression, for treatment of hormone receptor positive breast cancers. And we know that this helps improve cure as well as in patients with metastatic cancer, control of their breast cancer. It’s also used in patients who are undergoing chemotherapy, who are pre-menopausal and wish to protect their ovaries during chemotherapy as well. And so it’s got a double use in pre-menopausal women.<\/p>\n
Isabel Moussalli: Breast Cancer Network Australia’s Vicki Durston agrees it’s a very effective drug. They’ve been contacted by many who are anxious about this decision.<\/p>\n
Vicki Durston: They already live with fear of it coming back or fear of progression for those living with metastatic breast cancer. And so this uncertainty has them unclear of whether they need to stockpile the drug, whether it’s not going to be accessible, what’s available and when is it not there for them. So they are really fearful and we want to reassure them that it is available at the moment. And we are working tirelessly with clinicians and with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee who have been fantastic in having those conversations around what other options are available for these women.<\/p>\n
Isabel Moussalli: Dr Wanda Cui explains efforts are underway to make similar drugs available on the PBS. It’s not clear when that may happen.<\/p>\n
Wanda Cui: There is a big push from both consumer bodies as well as medical oncology bodies to try and get some of these other medications available to our patients. So that is one avenue to, I guess, that we’re all as a community trying to advocate for so that our patients don’t have a disruption in their supply or their treatment essentially.<\/p>\n
Isabel Moussalli: But she hopes Australian patients don’t face a situation like this in the future.<\/p>\n
Wanda Cui: A lesson learnt from this scenario is being able to have more options, firstly, so that we can tailor treatments to our patients, but also so that when one medication supply is disrupted, we still have another option for our patients, I think is a major lesson from this situation.<\/p>\n
Samantha Donovan: Oncologist Dr Wanda Cui from the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre. That report from Isabel Moussalli.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Samantha Donovan:\u00a0Breast cancer and endometriosis patients have been given just a few months’ notice of the removal of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20662],"tags":[11153,1852,25452,96,97,27265,8741],"class_list":["post-56165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-astrazeneca","tag-astrazeneca","tag-cancer","tag-drug","tag-health","tag-medical","tag-pbs","tag-podcast"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116692589160543207","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}