Consultation for the funding of Ocrelizumab for RRMS

August 9, 2019 | Life with MS, Treatments

Pharmac announced on Wednesday 7^th August, that they are now publicly consulting on the proposed funding of Ocrelizumab for Relapsing Remitting MS.

MSNZ welcomes this announcement which we have been advocating for since May 2017. To read more about our work in this area and our submissions made please see here: https://www.msnz.org.nz/ocrevus-ocrelizumab/

Funding would be available from 1 December 2019 and would be subject to the current criteria for access and exit as the other funded MS treatments. For more information about this please see here.

MSNZ will be making a submission to Pharmac and continue to highlight the following areas:

• Advocating to make the treatment available before 1 December due to the increasing urgency of many people to switch treatments.
• Requesting that the application and review process for switching can begin prior to 1 December to reduce further delay.
• Increasing access by making changes to the entry and exit criteria based on the evidence available.

Pharmac are looking for feedback from anyone who may be impacted by this move for funding and we strongly encourage you to submit these before 5pm on Wednesday 21^st August. Your engagement in this consultation process is important! It will highlight to Pharmac the demand, need and interest that the MS community has in seeing the availability of MS treatments.

Interested parties may include

• People with multiple sclerosis and their whanau
• Organisations with an interest in multiple sclerosis treatment
• Neurologists
• Community and hospital pharmacies
• DHBs

You are welcome to send your own submissions to consult@pharmac.govt.nz.

Alternatively, if you would like to feed into our submission please send your comments to amanda@msnz.websitereview.nz by Thursday 15^th August.

PPMS

At this stage Pharmac have declined applications to fund Ocrelizumab for those with PPMS. MSTAC at their June 2018 meeting (consisting of neurologists with expertise in treating MS) recommended ocrelizumab PPMS funding (with medium priority) for patients with active inflammation. NICE have funded ocrelizumab for this PPMS patient group in the UK.

MSNZ will be continuing to advocate for funded access for those with PPMS.