The recommendation is subject to Special Authority criteria, which will limit who can prescribe it.<\/p>\n
The recommendation has been announced after the advisory group met in December, with a full record of the meeting expected to be available by March.<\/p>\n
A \u2018goldrush\u2019 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 when there was a \u201cgold rush\u201d on kinds of drugs that were very effective at reducing obesity.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the pressure is on to really deliver them,\u201d he said, \u201cthe problem at the moment is the expense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wegovy helped reduce the incidence 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
\u201cType two diabetes is a very chronic, expensive disease so Pharmac would be interested in drugs that would reduce that by bringing it under control or even reversing it.\u201d<\/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 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The recommendation is subject to Special Authority criteria, which will limit who can prescribe it. The recommendation has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3401,738,29891,42,29890,2225,5338,2683,43,19953,40,38,41,39,21419,18953,18216],"class_list":["post-264504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-drug","tag-funding","tag-gibbens","tag-headlines","tag-krystal","tag-loss","tag-makes","tag-move","tag-news","tag-pharmac","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-towards","tag-wegovy","tag-weight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264504","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=264504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}