advisory group met in December<\/a>, with a full record of the meeting expected to be available by March.<\/p>\nA ‘goldrush’ of weight loss drugs<\/p>\n
Boyd Swinburn, an Auckland University Professor of global health and nutrition, told Morning Report, the move towards funding came at a time when there was a “gold rush” on these kinds of drugs that were very effective at reducing obesity.<\/p>\n
“So the pressure is on to really deliver them,” he said, “the problem at the moment is the expense.”<\/p>\n
Wegovy helped reduce the incidents of diseases including type-two diabetes and sleep apnea, Swinburn said.<\/p>\n
The struggle for Pharmac would be finding a mechanism to make it affordable within its fixed budget, he said.<\/p>\n
“Type two diabetes is a very chronic, expensive disease so Pharmac would be interest in drugs that would reduce that by bringing it under control or even reversing it.”<\/p>\n
Weight loss specialist Dr Gerard McQuinlan, told Morning Report, there had been lots of good evidence that Wegovy slowed the rates of heart disease and strokes in patients.<\/p>\n
He said most of his patients who were on Wegovy had some sort of co-morbidity, rather than just being classed as obese.<\/p>\n
McQuinlan believed if the drug was funded, the advisory board would most likely be looking at making it available to high-risk patients.<\/p>\n
“There have been really good trials showing 20 percent reduction in heart disease patients getting a second event.”<\/p>\n
Having the drug unfunded created inequity, McQuinlan said, and if it was funded it would create clear criteria for managing patients with obesity and heart disease.<\/p>\n
“I think it will be targeted to certain high-risk patients. [It] will not be for mass-prescribing, probably for people who already have established cardiovascular disease.”<\/p>\n
Previously, Pharmac had received two applications to fund Wegovy.<\/p>\n
The first was in September, for people with an established cardiovascular disease (such as someone who has had a heart attack or stroke) and a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 27 or higher. The second was in October, for chronic weight management in people with a BMI of 30 or higher, with at least one weight-related comorbidity.<\/p>\n
New Zealand has the third-highest adult obesity rate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wegovy is a weight loss drug that is injected weekly. Photo: JENS KALAENE Pharmac has taken the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[48,47,134,524,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-264341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-health","tag-medication","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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