Mount teacher NZer of the Year?

Leisa Renwick with her students at Mount Maunganui College.

Mount Maunganui schoolteacher Leisa Renwick has been nominated for New Zealander of the Year.

Last year she fought and survived stage four melanoma after being given just weeks to live. She puts her survival down to the breakthrough drug Keytruda which costs over $10,000 a month.

Leisa Renwick took up the fight to get public funding for the drug and gathered an 11,000 signature petition in support of her cause and took it to the steps of parliament.

"Only those with the means to pay can access medicines that can save our lives. The wealthy are offered treatment and the poor are sent home to die and that's a fact," she said.

"I would say that while you're making your commercial decisions, while you're negotiating with those two drug companies, someone is dying every single day” she said at the time.

Her campaign for public funding of Keytruda was successful and today she is back at work "and paying taxes". It's estimated the funding will save 120 lives a year. To vote in the People's Choice go to

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/new-zealanders-of-the-year/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501017&objectid=11756183

Voting closes midnight next Saturday, December 10.

The winner will be announced together with the New Zealander of the Year on December 31.

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1 comment

And next....

Posted on 09-12-2016 18:01 | By laugeo

is to follow this wonderful lady's lead and get this new wonder drug funded for other forms of cancer that it has been proven to help. Check out this link to see another Tauranga family's struggle with a similar battle! https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/mitchpennellLeisa's story is an inspiration; now we need to look at other's as well that have basically been told 'you have the wrong cancer to get funded treatment'.


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