Mr EOIN CAMERON —My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Family Services. Will the minister inform the House of any new developments with regard to drug therapy for people suffering from mental illness, especially schizophrenia?

Dr WOOLDRIDGE —I thank the honourable member for his question. There is an exciting development in the treatment of schizophrenia. It is a drug produced by Eli Lilly called olanzapine, going under the trademark of Zyprexa. Up until now the drug most commonly used has been clozapine, but that has a good number of people on whom it does not work and also has side effects that may be jerking movements or what, in medical terms, is called extrapyramidal symptoms. Olanzapine only came into trials in the United States in the middle of last year. The trials have shown that it is in fact 10 to 12 per cent more effective than any medication for schizophrenia currently on the market, and it has 17 per cent less side effects. So for those people who have side effects from medication, it is terribly exciting. There are also rare occurrences when people are on clozapine where they have what is called a blood dyscrasia and the body does not produce white cells, so this is potentially life threatening. Olanzapine does not have the same side-effects.

This drug was considered by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee back in March and they recommended that, because it was more effective and because it had fewer side effects, it should be made available to the Australian public. What has been difficult here though is that this is a very high cost medication and just for this one medication across the period of the forward estimates, it will cost around $65 million.

However, I am pleased to inform the honourable member that yesterday afternoon we did get permission to place this on the pharmaceutical benefits system from the first reprinting of the new schedule, which is 1 August. We expect that several thousand Australians will benefit from this very high cost medication. It shows what the benefits are of having a pharmaceutical benefits system that is able to cope with the highest cost, newest medication, including one as expensive as this. I expect that it will be a very exciting advance in treatment for people with mental illness.