NHIA to expand availability of lung cancer drug Tagrisso

Taipei, Sept. 2 (CNA) The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) said Monday it expects to expand coverage of Tagrisso, a third-generation targeted drug, for more lung cancer patients from October.

Tagrisso is currently prescribed only to some 3,400 stage-four lung adenocarcinoma patients in Taiwan. From Oct. 1 at the earliest, about 4,000 stage-3b patients should be able to get the drug per year, NHIA official Tai Hsueh-yung (戴雪詠) told CNA.

Lung adenocarcinoma is a common type of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Tagrisso is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with NSCLC that has certain abnormal epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR).

The new measure agreed on by the NHIA in August aims to catch up with international guidance, with the agency expected to spend NT$8 billion (US$250 million) on the drug per year -- the highest annual amount ever for a single medicine on record.

Tagrisso was first introduced into Taiwan's National Health Insurance Program in April 2020, for around 850 NSCLC patients with the EGFR T790M mutation.

According to government tallies, lung cancer has been the deadliest of all types of cancer in Taiwan in nearly 20 years.

In Taiwan, one person dies every 44.7 minutes from lung cancer, making it the cancer that consumes the highest medical spending. It also has the highest fatality rate and the highest late-stage diagnosis rate of all types of cancer.