They, or their loved ones are often ill or trying to come to terms with a life-threatening or terminal diagnosis. Often, they are lone voices calling for change or help. Always, it is a David versus Goliath battle.

The Medicine Gap is helping to provide a collective voice to the thousands and thousands of New Zealanders who need help to stay well or to stay alive.

It is our hope that every New Zealander understands the medicines predicament we are in and will join our call to provide First World access to modern medicines for New Zealanders.

4 years 7 months:
the average time an approved drug sits on the waitlist.

Our medicines budget has not kept up with some of the major developments in modern medicines, and for more than a decade successive Governments have underfunded Pharmac, the agency responsible for buying medicines for New Zealanders.

Almost 100 medicines approved for funding by MedSafe are languishing on a waiting list including modern medicines to treat mental health, cancer, diabetes, cardiac conditions, rare disorders, Crohn’s disease and arthritis.

In the last two years alone, New Zealanders have submitted 24 petitions to Parliament amassing over 400,000 signatures, seeking funding for a broad spectrum of lifesaving, life-transforming, or life-extending drugs.

On the Givealittle platform, hundreds of New Zealanders are now fundraising for drugs to either keep them alive or ease their suffering.

Our pharmaceutical budget has not kept pace with population growth, advances in pharmaceutical science and technology, or inflation and New Zealand is falling further and further behind.

New Zealand now sits at the bottom of the OECD for ‘per capita spend’ on medicines, behind countries like Latvia and Colombia.