OPINION, by Duncan Garner:
Dear Jacinda,
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is still being feted abroad, but she needs to turn her attention to a small group of women at home who are dying of breast cancer, argues Duncan Garner. Breast cancer patients protesting outside Parliament last year in an effort to win Pharmac funding for the drug Ibrance.
And that's why I write to you, Jacinda. Yes, to praise you, but now I plead with you to do your job for a small group of dying New Zealanders. They are women, dozens of them, and they have advanced breast cancer. They are mums who don't want to die and they want you to intervene so they can see this Christmas, see their son off to primary school and see their daughter attend her first school ball.
Yes, Jacinda, I'm asking for you to climb all over process and rules and find the miserly $5 million they need as a group to fund drugs such as Ibrance, which may give some of them up to five years of extra time on earth.
