12 October 2017 -  A letter to the Editor of the New Zealand Herald from the Managing Director of MSD New Zealand.

Cancer touches all New Zealanders in some way, and the number of cancer diagnoses is on the rise, with one in three of us likely to be diagnosed in our lifetime.

Giving hope in the fight to beat cancer, new immunotherapy medicines are emerging with better survival data than we've seen before. Yet, because of New Zealand's strict system for funding, many of these essential new medicines are not currently available to all who need them.

As New Zealanders, we should be challenging the new government to ensure cancer is seen as a priority, not only in terms of faster access to specialists and treatment, but also faster access to the most effective medicines. Patients may be getting diagnosed more quickly, but in many cases they are being given treatments that have been superseded in most other countries.

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