Media Coverage

Awesome women describe their fight for the right to survive, before Parliament's Health Select Committee.

Major new research has discovered a protein that can determine whether or not a person will benefit from hormone therapy or chemotherapy. Research is now underway to turn it into a tool or biomarker that clinicians can use to target the best treatment for each patient.

A tremendous idea. We agree totally. Women with advance breast cancer should have unlimited free doctors' visits as a matter of course.

Opinion piece from Bryce Edwards, a lecturer in Politics at Victoria University. An excellent summary of some of the debate and commentary in recent months about the poor cancer treatment in NZ.

17-year-old Molly Rose Mulholland expresses her extreme disappointment that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern did not respond personally to her letter calling for funding of important medicines for advanced breast cancer. 

Blair Vining has spoken out against the public health system which he says fails to hold District Health Boards to account for life-threatening wait times. He had to wait eight weeks for an "urgent appointment" with an oncologist after being diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer. Instead he went to private Christchurch oncologist Chris Jackson - who is also the medical director of Cancer Society New Zealand - and has gained more time with his family.

The Cancer Society is calling for a national approach to cancer care, rather than care differing depending on where you live.

Two Rotorua women describe how challenging it is to get access to the unfunded breast cancer medicine Ibrance. For one, her parents are using their retirement savings to pay for the medicine for her, and  the other had to sell a property to pay for the medicine.

Sue Wall-Cade and Tracy Barr-Smith are among the leaders of a push for better treatment for women with advanced breast cancer, also known as Stage 4 breast cancer. They want better drugs and a review of PHARMAC.

Editorial: Breast cancer medicines funding advocate Wiki Mulholland is named the Manawatū Standard Person of the Year. The editor writes she has become the face and the heart of a campaign – a belief that it is morally reprehensible for Kiwi families to be bankrupting themselves [for medicines] in their pursuit of more time together.