A Central Otago mother with bowel cancer is considering selling her home so she can fund a vital cancer drug.
Jo Mckenzie-Mclean is paying almost $100,000 for six months of treatment, each pill worth $30 each, but it's worth every cent.
"I'm relying on this drug to help me be a mum for my children, to help me live my life."
The drug cetuximab is not publicly funded for Mckenzie-Mclean's stage four bowel cancer.
"[I'm] stressing about how I'm going to pay for these drugs and whether I might have to end up selling my home to pay for it."
Because going without the drug is not an option: "some of my tumours have actually disappeared completely."
A Cancer Control Agency report has revealed cetuximab is one of 18 individual medicines funded in Australia but not here.
The agency's chief executive, Professor Diana Sarfati, said "people are rightly concerned about being able to access [the] best possible care".
Pharmac chief executive Sarah Fitt says Pharmac wants to fund these medicines.
"We want to fund these medicines, six of these medicines pairs are on our list of medicines waiting to be funded, another six are going through our assessment."
But Pharmac says it's constrained by its budget, a budget Cancer Society's co-medical director Dr Geroge Laking wants increased.
"Cancer medicines are instrumental for cancer survival - when you can't get the medicines, survival isn't looking as good."
Something cancer advocate Malcolm Mulholland is worried about. He says funding gaps are far worse than the report shows.
"The report grossly understated the magnitude of the cancer medicine crisis in New Zealand."
Mulholland shared his outrage at the methodology of the report.
"The way that the agency went about assessing these drugs, is they used a tool that's only ever been used for Kazakhstan."
Sarfati was quick to defend the tools used in the report.
"It has been used in Kazakhstan, that's true, but certainly not only Kazakhstan. It's one of the most extensively used tools."
Health Minister Andrew Little backed his agency,
"This is a report that's been done for New Zealand and for the New Zealand situation, and has been peer reviewed."
But the report is a hard pill to swallow for cancer patients like Mckenzie-Mclean.
"I'm feeling really let down by the health system here."
Mckenzie-Mclean hopes Pharmac approves her medication before she runs out of money.
