Advocates are calling for more affordable melanoma pre-screening services and treatment in New Zealand as the number of Kiwis being diagnosed with the disease is expected to rise.
New research published by SKIMEX has found Australia and New Zealand had the highest rates of melanoma in the world in 2020.
New Zealand had the highest melanoma death rate in 2020, with 350 people dying from the skin cancer every year.
Around 4000 Kiwis are diagnosed with melanoma annually. It's the country’s third most common cancer for men and women.
Melanoma diagnoses are expected to increase by 50% globally in the next 20 years.
Patient Voice Aotearoa spokesman Malcolm Mulholland told Breakfast the figures are “scary”, adding that it makes for “fairly daunting reading”.
He added, however, that we “also need to look at melanoma in the wider context of just cancer in Aotearoa”.
“We know that currently, one in every three people, sadly, will have an experience with cancer and that’s due to rise in 2030, with it being one in every two.
“Whilst this is extremely bad for melanoma, it’s extremely bad, also, for cancer right across the board.”
Mulholland said the “big fear now” is that as “the pale baby boomers age, they will see more and more cases on the rise”.
“Sadly, we’re not equipped to deal with that. We don’t have a screening program in New Zealand, and nor do we fund a large number of medications that are funded over in Australia to treat melanoma,” he said.
Melanoma awareness advocate Leeann Marriott’s brother Andrew died from melanoma in 2015, at the age of 48.
“He was first diagnosed in March and then in August - 26 weeks later - he passed away with it,” she told Breakfast.
“When they found it, it was in his brain so with those secondary cancers, and it was too late for any treatment so it was quite a progressive disease.
“We grew up in the baby boomer age of baby oil and getting burnt and having fun in the sun and weren’t aware of skin cancers or what it could do to him or to us.”
Marriott said the cost of getting a pre-screening is “exorbitant”.
“You can go to your local GP if you’ve got something of suspicion on your body like a mole or a spot that you’re not sure of, but to go for a skin check, they can range anywhere from $180 to up to $300.
“It’s quite out of reach for a lot of people.”
Marriott co-founded the nonprofit SkinCanNZ, which set up free skin check days to raise awareness of skin cancer and making skin checks more accessible for everyday New Zealanders.
The volunteer-run organisation saw 700 people in three years.
She said it was about “building awareness and also being aware that it is really costly to go and get a skin check”.
“We don’t have enough dermatologists or specialist GPs in New Zealand to support the service and the growing number of people that have skin cancers and melanoma.”
The lack of funding for cancer treatment drugs is also a concern, Mulholland said.
He said Australia funds seven more melanoma treatment drugs than Pharmac,New Zealand’s drug-buying agency.
“Five of those have been applied for to Pharmac for funding - none of them have received it.”
He said the “kicker”, however, was that the medicines “aren’t even on Pharmac’s OFI list, or Options for Investment list, and these are the drugs Pharmac really want to fund”.
“They’re actually part of the 280 drugs that are slowly grinding their way through Pharmac’s notoriously slow process.
“If we were to fund Pharmac on a per capita basis, as they are doing in Australia, Pharmac would have $2.3 billion more funding and the Government is just not prepared to entertain that.”
Marriott said while treatment was available for her brother, “it wasn’t funded so if he wanted to do it, he would have had to have privately found the funds to do that”.
“Unfortunately, his diagnosis was too far gone that any treatment would work at that time. That was seven years ago, so drugs and medicine have moved on from there.”
She called on Kiwis to take melanoma “very seriously’.
“It’s so easy for us all to go out in summer and get a sun tan and not worry about the consequences of it.
“I’ve got a lot of friends who are starting to get skin cancers and they may be minor at this point but they could easily develop into something.
“I think we need to cover up, protect ourselves from the sun and just be aware of it because the more aware of it we are, the less likely we are to end up in the health system further down the line.”
Marriott called on the Government to provide further funding for its treatment and awareness, as well as greater accessibility to cancer treatment drugs.
“They need to look at that as a society because it is going to get worse in New Zealand.”
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