Gross amount of funding for midazolam, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine over past five calendar years

Thank you for your request dated 24 January 2022 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to medicines funding over the past five years. You asked: 

The amount of specific drugs imported, funded and/or prescribed… for the following drugs (per month if possible) for each of the last 5 years.

1. Midazolam
2. Ivermectin
3. Hydroxychloroquine
4. Remdesiver
5. Cannabidiol (CBD) 

In response to your request, please refer to the tables below. 

Table: Gross amount of funding over past five calendar years in the community

 Table: Gross amount of funding over past five calendar years in hospitals

Notes:

1. Community data is gross value of units dispensed in the community.
2. Hospital data is based on gross purchase data provided by DHBs. Pharmac makes no representation as to the accuracy of the figures provided. Hospital data includes free stock.
3. Data for December 2021 is not yet available. Therefore, data provided for calendar year 2021 is not for the full year but only up to 30 November 2021.
4. The gross amount funded can be divided by the Pharmaceutical Schedule list price to approximate the number of packs dispensed/purchased. 

Please note that we approach our assessment of requests for information under the OIA on the basis that once we release the information to you it becomes available to any other party in that exact form (whether by you distributing it to others or by virtue of us receiving the same request from a different third party). 

We have withheld information about remdesivir as this relates to commercially sensitive information and we consider withholding is necessary to protect information that would be likely to unreasonably prejudice the commercial position of the supplier/subject of the information (section 9(2)(b)(ii)). 

Additionally, we have withheld information about cannabidiol (CBD) as it has only been funded through the Named Patient Pharmaceutical Assessment process (NPPA) on a small number of occasions and we consider withholding is necessary to protect the privacy of natural persons (section 9(2)(a)). 

As required under the OIA, we also considered whether, in the circumstances, the withholding of this information was outweighed by other considerations which render it desirable, in the public interest, to make this information available. In this case we did not consider that the public interest outweighed the reasons for withholding the information. 

Please note you have the right, by way of complaint under section 28(3) of the OIA to an Ombudsman, to seek an investigation and review of our decision.

We trust that this information answers your queries. We are making our information more freely available, so we now publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.