There are fears a new bill to overhaul legislation around medicines will stop people from being able to import unfunded medications.
Patient Voice Aotearoa wants to see amendments made to the Therapeutic Products Bill - which is working its way through parliament at the moment.
They're voicing their concerns to the Health Select Committee on Tuesday.
Lloyd Burr spoke to advocate Malcolm Mulholland just before his appearance and began by asking him what aspects of this bill he is most concerned about.
"There are four that we are concerned about," Mulholland said.
"The first one is that there is now a responsibility on pharma [pharmaceutical companies] to pay for a license fee in order to run compassionate access schemes and to provide medicines to a handful of patients.
"The second concern we have is around the importation of prescribed medicines from overseas by mail that will be outlawed under the ACT.
"The third is around clinical trials - at the moment we have a very good framework by which clinical trials are approved within 45 days - that responsibility will be transferred to Medsafe [who] are notoriously slow and there's no timeframe given by which they have to approve clinical trials.
"Our fourth concern is in relation to what they classify as an advertisement of an unfunded medicine. f you are seen to be advertising an unfunded medicine… then that can be deemed to be illegal and if you are found to be illegal under the law, you can face either up to a NZD$200,000 fine or up to five years in jail."
Mulholland said not being able to import prescribed medicines from overseas will result in many patients dying.
"What they say is that you must in-person, basically, jump on a plane, go to the country and bring it back with you and to clear it at the border.
"It's actually not possible for some patients - one, they're sick, two, if they've got cancer, they are at risk of blood clotting… and three, what happens in a scenario where we've got a pandemic and the borders are shut?
"You're either forced in the position where you will die because you can't get the medicine or you break the law and you become a criminal.
"It just makes no sense."
Listen to the full interview between Malcolm Mulholland and Lloyd Burr above.
You can also download the full interview on the Lloyd Burr Live podcast, and listen on the go.
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