Breast cancer and endometriosis drug Zoladex is being pulled from Australia. How will women be affected?

Manufactured by AstraZeneca, Zoladex provides pain relief for women with endometriosis and is a treatment for breast cancer. Photograph: Olena Malik/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Manufactured by AstraZeneca, Zoladex provides pain relief for women with endometriosis and is a treatment for breast cancer. Photograph: Olena Malik/Getty Images Breast cancer and endometriosis drug Zoladex is being pulled from Australia. How will women be affected? The vital medicine, made by AstraZeneca, will not be available from November, possibly leaving thousands of women without treatment Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Thousands of women could be left without vital breast cancer and endometriosis medicine when AstraZeneca removes its treatment from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and the private market, experts warn. Zoladex will no longer be available in Australia from November, as the ABC first reported , but some existing patients will still be able to access it for an additional six months. Breast Cancer Network Australia also says there have been increasing delays to list other critical breast cancer drugs on the PBS, which they fear is due to policy changes in the US and global uncertainty. What will this mean for women who use Zoladex, and what happens next? What is Zoladex? Manufactured by AstraZeneca, the Goserelin 3.6mg implant, also known as Zoladex, is a breast cancer and endometriosis treatment that suppresses a patient’s ovaries from producing oestrogen. It is also used for fertility preservation in young women receiving chemotherapy, and reducing the risk of the recurrence of early-stage hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. The treatment (a small pellet) is inserted into the skin once a month. Breast Cancer Network Australia estimates about 7,000 Australian women with breast cancer access the medicine every year, but in the last 18 months there were 94,000 Zoladex prescriptions filled. “It is designed to suppress the ovaries or put the ovaries to sleep for those people with hormone positive receptor breast cancer, so that means we try and reduce the production of oestrogen,” said BCNA’s policy director Vicki Durston. I was told my inability to conceive a second child was a ‘mystery’. In fact, I was simply ignored | Katie Found Read more Dr Nisha Khot, president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said it provides crucial pain relief for women with endometriosis. It can be used to reduce pain symptoms before endometriosis surgery, before fertility treatment or for longer term pain relief. “[Removing the medicine] is absolutely life-altering for women who are currently able to carry on with the resemblance of a normal life, to work, participate in the community. Without it perhaps they will not be able to function as they have been.” Why is it being removed from the PBS? Nial Wheate, a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at Macquarie University, said