Sally Xu needs cancer medicine to stay alive but Pharmac doesn’t fund it.
Young Aucklander Sally Xu will die soon unless she can raise $150,000 for a new cancer medicine.
Ms Xu, a 24-year-old from Botany who is a trained early childhood education teacher, has never been able to work since she finished training because of an aggressive form of Hodgkin's lymphoma, a blood-related cancer that started in her neck three and a half years ago and has spread into her chest close to her heart.
She has had four chemotherapy treatments, three radiotherapy treatments and a stem cell transplant from her sister, but nothing has worked.
Ms Xu doesn't know how long she will live now without the new medicine, saying: "I have never asked my doctor because I don't want it to play in my head. The doctor said it won't be long."
She has had two treatments at Mercy Ascot Hospital of a new drug called Brentuximab, which was granted accelerated approval for Hodgkin's lymphoma by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2011.
An x-ray has shown that her tumours have shrunk.
"I'm actually feeling great," she said.
But Pharmac does not yet fund the drug in New Zealand, so Ms Xu needs to raise $150,000 to complete the first nine treatments, and possibly $300,000 if she needs a full 16 treatments.