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Kim Dennis will book an appointment with your doctor.
The 67-year-old woman with type 2 diabetes spent six years taking dulaglutide as part of a trial, but found that her health deteriorated when the trial ended.
Now Dennis could be one of roughly 50,000 high-risk diabetes patients who can access the new drugs dulaglutide, once it gets approval from MedSafe, and empagliflozin starting in February following an announcement from Pharmac on Monday.
The criteria for accessing the drugs will also be targeting Maori and Pacific patients for the first time.
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Kim Dennis used a modern diabetes drug as part of a trial and is happy to be funded by Pharmac.
“They finally saw the light,” he said.
The new drugs, which control blood sugar levels and health complications like kidney failure and heart disease, were due to be funded on December 1, but state drug purchasing agency Pharmac said it needed more time to consider the comments.
You have now added Maori and Pacific ethnicities to the criteria, although you do not have to be Maori and Pacific to access drugs, which will now be available as of February 1, 2021.
The changes to the criteria should ensure that people at high risk for heart and kidney complications can access the treatments, said Executive Director Sarah Fitt.
The inclusion of Maori or Pacific ethnicity in the criteria was “an intentional move to proactively promote equity in access to these treatments for population groups who are at high risk of complications from type 2 diabetes and for whom there is direct evidence of inequities in access to medicines, “she said.
The measure was also billed to help younger patients with type 2 diabetes, a progressive condition that worsens over time and can end with kidney failure or limb amputation.
Porirua’s GP, Dr. Sean Hanna, said his youngest patient with diabetes in the past 12 months was 13 years old.
“Most of my patients are Maori and Pacific and I have a disproportionate number of patients with type 2 diabetes,” he said.
Racism in the healthcare system also played a role, he said. “It really is in the impacts of colonization; the marginalization of Maori in a health system developed to serve the greatest number of people. There is systemic racism in the health system ”.
Dr. Bryan Betty, medical director of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said ethnic Maori and Pacific people often contracted the disease earlier and had disproportionately worse health outcomes.
SUPPLIED
Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners medical director and Porirua GP, Dr. Bryan Betty, says inequity in diabetes must change.
“Maori and Pacific patients are seven to 12 times more likely to progress to end-stage renal failure compared to Europeans. This situation obviously needs to improve dramatically,” he said.
Type 2 diabetes, the most common type, is primarily a disease of middle-aged and older people related to excess weight, diet, and lack of physical activity. Up to 250,000 New Zealanders have diabetes.
People of Maori, Pacific and South Asian ethnicities are at particular risk for genetic reasons.
Maori experience chronic kidney disease at a rate three times that of non-Maori or Pacific New Zealanders and receive dialysis treatment for end-stage renal disease at a rate three times that of European adults in New Zealand.
Maori and Pacific Islander children are also 18 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than European children.
Diabetes
- Diabetes is a group of diseases that result in excess sugar in the blood because the body does not produce enough insulin.
- More than 250,000 people in New Zealand have been diagnosed with diabetes, most of whom are type 2.
- Type 1 diabetes is a life-long variation of the disease that usually manifests in childhood or adolescence. Symptoms can appear suddenly and cause serious health complications over time. However, the condition can be managed with insulin replacement therapy and lifestyle changes.
- Type 2 is generally associated with middle-aged and older people, and is understood to be related to excess weight, diet, and lack of physical activity.
- But ethnic minorities have a higher prevalence of diabetes than others.
