Breast cancer claims Pharmac fighter

• Author: David Fisher
• Published date: 02 December 2021
• Publication title: Guardian, The

Mulholland, 43, died last Friday, surrounded by whānau and friends at home in Palmerston North.

As the sun rose on Manawatū, Mulholland’s husband Malcolm let the world know through social media. Dawn came with tributes for the struggle they had shared — a struggle that had turned into a campaign drawing focus to others who shared the same or a similar plight.

“The end was quite sudden,” he told the Herald on Friday. “We thought we had more time. That was the thing that really affected us and something we are struggling with.”

When the diagnosis came in 2018, it was terminal. For the Mulhollands, the disease certain to take Wiki lit up inequity and tragedy known intimately by those walking the same road.

There were drugs to extend her life but the best were not supported with taxpayer funding. There was the opaque process to determine that funding. There was the personal cost which saw the family robbing future financial security to buy months, weeks, days in the present.

There were statistical anomalies particular to Māori — not truly anomalies but the consequence of a health system that systemically delivered worse outcomes to one specific part of our community.

Mulholland had lived for 40 years with what it meant to be a Māori woman in Aotearoa.

With terminal breast cancer, she was now confronted with what it meant to die as a Māori woman.

From the point of diagnosis, those sharing Mulholland’s diagnosis live an average of three years — 1095 days.

“From statistical information, it’s about 12 months for Māori women living in New Zealand,” she told the Herald last year. “Statistically, I shouldn’t be here. That’s a real hard-out thing. It’s confronting to think I actually should be dead.”

Mulholland beat those odds and, in the end, hit that statistical average life expectancy. She did so — they did so — by fighting against the constraints of the public health system.

In 2018, the couple and their three children were life complete. For what they received, they gave back through service on school boards, coaching sport and other contributions to the community in which they lived.

When the diagnosis came, it was shattering. More so the discovery two tiers of healthcare were available — one for those who could afford it and one for those who could not.

The public system offered chemotherapy for free. For $5800 a month, they could access a drug called Ibrance, which slows cell growth and inhibits cancer’s scale and spread.

“There was no way that we could afford...