Medsafe approved and Pharmac funded drugs

OIA response

Thank you for your request dated 8 September 2023 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to Medsafe and Pharmac You requested:

I am wanting to know how many drugs are medsafe approved and of those approved drugs, how many are funded by Pharmac.

We are pleased to respond to your request. Information on Medsafe approved drugs is available on their website(external link). We contacted Medsafe and were informed that there are approximately 3,800 medicines with full or provisional approval in New Zealand. This does not include products which have a status of ‘not available’, which are not considered to have up-to-date dossiers. Note that separate strengths of products are counted individually. For example, ‘Logem’ has three products – 25 mg, 50mg, 100mg.

A list of all pharmaceuticals funded by Pharmac can be found on our website(external link). As of 1 September, 2023, a total of 1,353 chemicals* and 3,388 formulations were funded by Pharmac (*though note, some of these listings from the community schedule are medical devices). Pharmac does not hold information on the proportion of Medsafe approved pharmaceuticals that are funded by Pharmac.

We trust that this information answers your queries. Please note, you have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman about our response to your OIA, under section 28(3) of the OIA. Details of how to make a complaint(external link) are on the Ombudsman’s website.

To make information more freely available, we publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.