(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Patients with advanced skin cancer are to be offered a breakthrough drug at a significantly reduced price.
The medicine Keytruda, which currently costs melanoma patients $150,000 a year, is being added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Phillippa Carisbrooke reports.
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At 32, with a toddler, and a baby on the way, Danielle Raisher is a widow.
Her husband Shane died from skin cancer three months ago.
The new melanoma drug Keytruda caused his tumours to shrink 70 per cent.
But Ms Raisher says the family couldn't afford to keep up his treatment.
"It was amazing after 14 years to have hope. Unfortunately it was taken from him. And it is a very hard thing for it to come down to money."
The family campaigned for Keytruda to be subsided.
The announcement by the Minister for Health, Sussan Ley, the federal government is to list the drug on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, or PBS, is bittersweet.
"The drug will treat 1,100 Australian patients as a result of today's announcement. And more importantly it will be available for the cost of any medicine on the PBS."
A single infusion currently costs around $10,000 every three weeks.
In the future, patients with a concession card will pay just over $6.
Others will pay $37.
Professor Grant McArthur from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre says Keytruda is a revolutionary treatment.
"The introduction of immune therapies like Keytruda is the biggest development I have seen in my careers. I did not think this was going to come. It is a remarkable new treatment. And we are very excited for our patients."
Around 100 Australians die each month from advanced melanoma.
Former Mayor of Melbourne Ron Walker is among more than 40 per cent of melanoma patient benefiting from Keytruda.
"I was a walking person that was going to die. And with this drug I came back to life in a year. So it's had an amazing effect on me."
Keytruda will be available on the PBS from September the 1st.
The opposition says that's an inexcusable delay for people suffering with the disease and their families.
Danielle Raisher agrees.
"Two to three months is a massive time lapse when you are a person who is terminally ill. If the government can consider bringing the PBS listing forward it may save people's lives."
