Now she has one injection every four weeks so can commute between New Zealand and Australia for treatment.
“I’m lucky I can commute but I understand so many other people can’t.”
Both Jo and Judy spend one week a month in Australia for their treatment.
Despite selling her house and buying an apartment in Australia, Jo Neep was able to also buy a small home in Arrowtown allowing her to live in New Zealand but go to Australia for her blood cancer treatment.
University of Auckland associate professor and Auckland City Hospital haematologist Rodger Tiedemann says the response rate to daratumumab is very good. He says that in combination with another drug it can control a patient’s myeloma for around five years on average. He does say that if it’s used later in a patient’s illness, the benefit is less.
Dr Tiedemann – who previously worked in Canada, has been advocating for better blood cancer treatments in New Zealand.
“Patients have had to go into palliative care as there’s no other treatment options for them. Daratumumab would have made a difference to them,” Dr Tiedemann told Newshub.
He says that out of all the blood cancer medicines on Pharmac’s Option for Investment list daratumumab has the greatest ability to improve patient outcomes and survival.
“Without this treatment – which has a 60 percent reduction in progression and deaths, people will die earlier as a result,” he says.
Professor Judith Trotman is a Kiwi haematologist now working in Sydney.
She says while there have been huge advancements in therapies for hematology in the past twenty years, New Zealand has fallen way behind.
“Not only are patients suffering but I have witnessed the despair of the haematologists and nurses who have to practice without the life-saving treatments broadly available in the developed world. This is feeding an exodus of clinicians to Australia and beyond, and a failure to return home for those clinicians unwilling to practice old world medicine,” says Professor Trotman.