Giving Hepatitis C patients the medication they were being deprived of would cost as much as €90 million every year, Health Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne said today.
He was reacting to an investigation report by the Ombudsman which found Hepatitis C patients were being denied the treatment because of cost cutting.
Ombudsman Joseph Said Pullicino said the Hepatitis medication, Harvoni Regime, would cost the authorities a staggering €75,000 per patient. There are around 1,000 Hepatitis C patients on the island, many of whom are drug abusers who contract the illness form needle sharing.
Dr Fearne said the cost of providing the medication could jeopardise the entire healthcare system. Instead, the government would be banding together with other small EU member states in a bid to lower the price.
“If we add this medication to the government’s formulary then the price will remain high. If many small states do this together then the price could be negotiated,” he said.
The medication was added to the schedule of medicines in the Social Security Act back in 2012, however, back then the medication cost around €18,000 per patient.
The Ombudsman was requested to intervene by two Hepatitis C patients, one of whom had contracted the disease after using contaminated products given to him by the Health Department some 30 years ago.
The Ombudsman had received expert opinion that about 20 per cent of Hepatitis C patients would develop liver failure or cancer if untreated.
He said there were about 35 patients who needed to start receiving the treatment as soon as possible. This would cost in the region of €2.6 million.
Dr Fearne, however, said providing the treatment to these patients only would be discriminatory.
In the long run, he said the government was looking to draft a Rare Diseases Policy, to amend similar situations.
Asked if his knew of any other medications not being provided for cost reasons, Dr Fearne said the government had a long list of “orphan medications” for rare diseases, some of which cost hundreds of thousands per cycle.