The Hospital Authority on Wednesday said it expects more than 400 patients will save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year following a major change to drug subsidies.

The leukaemia drug Dasatinib was reclassified from a self-financed item to a special drug in April.

Following the change, the annual cost for the targeted therapy dropped from as much as half a million dollars to just HK$240.

Officials estimate that the extra subsidies will cost the government approximately HK$49 million per year.

The authority’s chief pharmacist William Chui said the change will allow more treatment options for patients.

“There is lots of evidence showing the clinical efficacy and also the safety data to support the use of Dasatinib,” he said.

“According to international guidelines, Dasatinib is actually positioned as a second line treatment for leukaemia.

“When the patient develops resistance to the first generation drugs treatment, Dasatinib is another choice for the patient and for the doctor to choose to treat the patient.”

The authority has added 11 new drugs into its Drug Formulary from the start of this year, including four different targeted therapy medications for various types of cancers.

The authority also noted that more patients now qualify for the Samaritan Fund following a relaxation of the means test criteria.

For the first three months of the year, the authority said 2,200 applications for drug subsidies and 1,050 for non-drug items made by individuals who do not receive Comprehensive Social Security Assistance were approved.

These represent a 15 percent year-on-year increase, the authority chief manager on allied health Priscilla Poon said.

“We targeted actually to increase the number of beneficiaries that can be included into our safety net. Those patients have been included into our safety net. They were able to pay less with the increase in our subsidies,” she added.

For example, a kidney disease patient, in a three-person household with disposable capital of HK$303,000 and a monthly income of about HK$59,000, now only needs to pay five percent of their medication costs, down from 20 percent.

Single-person households also benefit from further relaxed means test criteria when applying for subsidies for one-off non-drug items.

They are now eligible if their monthly income does not exceed 150 percent of the median monthly domestic household income for a one-person household.

This income limit, which excludes foreign domestic helpers and is updated quarterly, stood at HK$15,150 as of the end of February.


Edited by Tony Sabine