If chosen for future funding, Wegovy would be available to people with a BMI of 35 or more with at least two comorbidities.
Photo: Jens Kalaene / AFP
Pharmac has added the weight-loss drug Wegovy to its list of medicines suitable for future funding.
In a decision released Thursday, the drug-funding agency confirmed it had added Semaglutide – brand name Wegovy – to its list of ‘Options For Investment’, which includes all the medications that Pharmac would fund, if the budget allowed.
The order of that list is not made public for commercial reasons.
If chosen for future funding, Wegovy would be available to people with a Body Mass Index of 35 or more with at least two comorbidities.
In February, Pharmac’s obesity treatments advisory group recommended the drug be funded with high priority.
Currently unfunded, Wegovy would cost someone about $400 a month.
The original application was for Wegovy to be funded for chronic weight management in adults with a BMI of more than 30.
According to the 2024/25 New Zealand Health Survey, that would apply to an estimated 34 percent of New Zealanders over 15 years of age, but the committee’s recommendation bumped that up to a BMI of 35, in line with comparable countries like Canada, England and Scotland.
“However, the group also considered that this threshold could be raised to a BMI of 40… if funding treatment down to this level proved to be cost-prohibitive or not cost-effective.”
With a BMI over 50, a person would not need comorbodities to qualify, according to the recommendation.
Below that threshold, a person would need to have at least two of the following – dyslipidaemia, hypertension, diabetes, obstructive sleep apnoea or established cardiovascular disease.
It also included a condition that treatment would stop, if someone did not experience at least a 10 percent reduction in weight after six months.
It noted that, due to the “relatively high prevalence of obesity and weight-related comorbidities, the budget impact of funding semaglutide for weight management would be very high”.
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