A cancer patient who has helped keep himself alive by buying cut-price medicines from India says he's now helping dozens of other New Zealand cancer patients who can't get medicines funded by Pharmac.
Photo: RNZ / LUKE MCPAKE
Intense pressure is on the government drug-buying agency which has admitted in interviews for an RNZ investigation that New Zealand sits at the bottom of the developed world in terms of the access to the number of medicines.
Without Pharmac funding, some cancer patients are facing costs of $10,000 a month on the private market - and others are resorting to importing cheap and potentially risky generic medicines from abroad.
Read the full story on the investigation from Guyon Espiner at RNZ In Depth.
