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Price Of Life-Changing Cancer Drug Reduced Slashed

The leukaemia and lymphoma medication will be listed on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme from Monday.
The subsidy will cost the government $466 million.
PA Wire/PA Images
The subsidy will cost the government $466 million.

Life-changing medication for leukaemia and lymphoma patients will soon be within reach for more than 900 Australians.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will announce on Monday, Ibrutinib - known as Imbruvica - will be listed on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme from December at a cost of $466 million.

The medicine which normally costs $187,390 per course of treatment will be reduced to $38.80 per script or $6.30 for concessional patients.

A wonder-drug that can save the lives of cancer patients will now be available to thousands of Australian sufferers. #9Newspic.twitter.com/WI6Jn9v8MH

— Nine News Australia (@9NewsAUS) October 8, 2017

It will be available to eligible patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukaemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma.

Normally Ibrutinib is used when patients have not responded to first line treatment with chemo-immuno-therapy.

This isn't the first time the government has added a life-changing drug to the pharmaceutical benefits scheme: in July, Turnbull announced that lung and renal cancer drug Opdivo would be subsidised at a cost of $1.1 billion.

Correction: A headline on this story originally stated that the price had been reduced by 4600 percent. This is incorrect.

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