Medicines NZ chief executive Graeme Jarvis has told Mike Hosking he’s supportive of the Act Party’s latest health policy requiring a biennial medicines strategy from the Ministry of Health.

Act hopes the strategy will provide global analysis of development in medicines, ensure regular performance reporting and benchmarking of Pharmac, require MedSafe to approve any drug or medical device approved by a similar foreign body within one week, and regularly review pharmacist-only and prescription-only classifications to ensure the benefits outweigh the cost of limiting access to medication for common ailments.

Party leader David Seymour said Kiwis can’t rely on the luck of the draw or politically motivated funding announcements, with New Zealand ranked consistently as one of the worst performers in the OECD with accessing medicines.

“Between 2012 — 2021, New Zealand was at the bottom of the OECD pack in launching new medicines. Of 460 new medicines, 16 per cent were launched in New Zealand, compared with 34 per cent for Australia and an OECD average of 41 per cent.”

Jarvis told Mike Hosking on Wednesday he was supportive that both National and Act had come out saying there was a need for a modernised medicine strategy and enhanced medicines approval process.

“It’s cross-party support, dear I say it.”

Pharmac had publicly stated it wanted a strategy and the Pharmac review committee had recommended NZ should get one by February 2023.

“We are a bit overdue for it,” Jarvis said.

A lot of the committee’s recommendations that were put to the government and Ministry of Health hadn’t “seen the light of day”.

There was talk, Jarvis said, that the Therapeutics Products Act could be a medicines strategy.

“As you know, it’s an act of parliament. You do need a medicines strategy; you need a roadmap for figuring out what New Zealand wants.”

“If you don’t think medicines are an important part of any modern health system, then you need your head looking at.”

Looking at other countries on how they procure medicines and how they register them, NZ was no different.

For example, NZ had bulk purchasing through government agencies and registration processes like other countries.

“We’re not unique, but what we find ourselves with at the moment is at the bottom of the OECD in terms of getting access to medicines.”

NZ was about as twice as slow at getting registration as other countries in the OCED, up to four years for some medicines.

It was also user pays system for the registration process in NZ before the medicine was publicly funded.

“When the registration is taking up to four years, that is a bit of a worry.”

“Anything that can be done to help that, especially when it’s a user pay system so the companies are having to pay up to a quarter of a million dollars . . . we’d really like it to be a bit faster so the medicines can get to the people that need them.”

Jarvis said the sooner the government got moving on it “the better for everyone I think”.

“Modernised medicines strategy and faster registration times, two ticks for that one.”