The gap that kills 1,000 people a year
New Zealand has 27,000 people living with blood cancer, over 3,000 new diagnoses annually, and deaths that have risen nearly 40 percent since 2008. It is now the country’s third leading cause of cancer death, and age-standardised mortality has shown no improvement in 15 years.
The survival comparison with Australia is damning. Five-year survival for leukaemia sits at 57.7% in New Zealand versus 66.4% across the Tasman. For non-Hodgkin lymphoma, it is 68.4% versus 77.4%. Professor Mark Elwood estimated in the New Zealand Medical Journal that roughly 1,000 people who die of cancer here each year would have survived in Australia.
The reason is not mysterious. New Zealand spends 0.4% of GDP on medicines against an OECD median of 1.4%. Since 2011, Australia has publicly funded 215 modern medicines compared to New Zealand’s 86. The average wait for public funding here is 1,050 days, nearly double Australia’s 556.
Patients are voting with their feet
Daratumumab, a myeloma drug funded in more than 45 countries, costs about $45 per dose in Australia. In New Zealand, patients pay $10,000 privately. Trials show it can extend survival by four years or more.
Myeloma patient Jo Neep moved to Australia in 2022 on the advice of her New Zealand haematologists. ‘I moved because I wanted life,’ she said. Tawhai Reti, a Greymouth patient, left his four young children to travel to Australia for the same drug. Auckland teacher Anne Goulter flies to Sydney every week for a tebentafusp infusion that would cost A$790,000 without subsidy, teaching four days a week around a Monday infusion schedule.
Every one of these patients represents disrupted employment, lost productivity, and economic activity transferred permanently to another country.
The bill is already landing
The April 2026 Blood Cancer NZ report quantifies the damage. Hospital-based blood cancer care cost nearly $209 million in 2023. People living with the disease accessed more than $56.3 million in social benefits in 2024. Some 69% draw on life savings to fund care, and one in seven spends more than $100,000 on unfunded medicines.
For employers, these are workers leaving the labour force, burning through savings that would otherwise fund consumption and investment, and relying on benefits the taxpayer funds regardless.
Specialists are leaving too
In September 2025, Professor Judith Trotman, Chair of the Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group, warned that highly trained doctors are being driven offshore because New Zealand is at least a decade behind in blood cancer treatment. ‘I really feel there are so many other medical migrants, so many New Zealand doctors who are at the top of their game practising here and in North America who just can’t envisage returning,’ she said.
She described New Zealand haematologists as ‘practising bare hands medicine’ and experiencing ‘moral injury.’ Unlike most cancers, blood cancer cannot be prevented or detected through screening, making specialist access the single decisive factor in outcomes. Losing the specialists compounds every other gap.
$604 million sounds generous until you do the maths
The government’s $604 million four-year Pharmac boost funded 66 new medicines in 2024/25. But of the six blood cancer medicines funded, none were for myeloma, the condition driving patient migration. Only 115 patients would benefit in the first year against 27,000 living with the disease. That is a coverage rate below 0.5%.
Te Aho o Te Kahu’s October 2024 analysis identified 46 blood cancer medicine-indication gaps between Australia and New Zealand, up from 26 in 2022. The gap is widening because Australia moves faster, not because New Zealand is going backwards in absolute terms.
Tim Edmonds, Chief Executive of Blood Cancer NZ, identified the structural problem in April 2026: ‘Responsibility is currently spread across multiple parts of the system, resulting in slow and uneven progress.’
The government has established a blood cancer oversight group. But an oversight group does not close a funding gap measured in hundreds of millions. Incremental budget increases will never catch a competitor spending 2.5 times more, approving medicines twice as fast, and actively recruiting your specialists. The question for business owners, taxpayers, and anyone paying insurance premiums is not whether New Zealand can afford to fund these medicines. It is how much longer we can afford not to.
Sources
- Blood Cancer New Zealand says country not keeping up with treatments internationally (2026-04-21)
- First comprehensive blood cancer report shows New Zealand lagging on modern care as government establishes blood cancer oversight group (2026-04-21)
- Myeloma patients move to Australia for cancer drug not funded here (2026-02-13)
- Health Minister to meet with blood cancer specialists who say NZ lagging behind with treatments (2026-03-13)
- Lack of access to lifesaving cancer drugs forces Kiwi patients across the Tasman (2026-03-28)
- NZ’s slow uptake of cancer treatments driving doctors offshore (2025-09-16)
- Access to Medicines (AtoM 5) Report: New Zealanders miss out on 142 modern medicines (2025-10-03)
- Pharmac Annual Report 2024-25 (2025-10-31)
- Te rere o te toto: Blood cancer medicines availability analysis (2024) (2024-10-24)