Every day, eleven Canadians hear the life-altering words: “You have multiple myeloma.”
This aggressive and often elusive blood cancer hides behind vague symptoms, leading many down a long road of uncertainty, misdiagnoses, and delayed answers.(1,2) It’s estimated that 4,100 Canadians were diagnosed in 2024, with five-year survival rates at just 50 percent.(3,4) The need for awareness, early diagnosis, and timely access to
treatment has never been greater.
Fortunately, scientific innovators have developed advanced therapeutic options that offer better outcomes for people living with multiple myeloma and similar serious diseases. Some of these treatments, such as CAR-T therapies, have been shown to give some patients five or more years without signs of disease or the need for ongoing treatment.(5) These options give patients—and their families— real hope for precious time with loved ones and a better quality of life. They can provide patients with the opportunity to live life on their own terms, according to their own routines, rather than navigating the demands of ongoing medical care in a sterile hospital environment.
However, despite strong clinical evidence and international adoption of innovative therapies, Canada continues to fall short in providing timely access to transformative treatments that could alter the course of disease for these patients.
Estimates suggest that 45 per cent of all people in Canada will receive a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, with new cases increasing as our population ages.(6) Yet Canada remains last in the G7 and 19th out of 20 peer OECD countries in the time it takes for patients to get access to new medicines following regulatory approval.
On average, we wait 867 days (2.5 years) for public coverage of certain blood cancer treatments. (7)
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15 other countries have already successfully reached agreements so patients can access these therapies. Canada is being left behind.
For someone with multiple myeloma, waiting isn’t passive. The wait can be life-threatening – patients may not survive long enough to benefit from promising therapies still navigating regulatory delays. For those who do survive, it can mean months of debilitating fatigue, bone pain, and repeated hospital visits, all while knowing that a potentially life-changing therapy exists but remains out of reach due to regulatory or reimbursement delays. When currently available treatments aren’t enough, and patients have exhausted all other treatment options without positive results, delays in accessing
innovative medications means these people are left to suffer as their disease progresses. Cancer doesn’t wait, and bureaucracy shouldn’t be a barrier for Canadian patients.
When patients can’t access new medications due to outdated health frameworks or regulatory roadblocks, provinces fall short of their own goals to accelerate access to life-saving therapies. This ties the hands of doctors and health teams who know these medicines can hold real hope, it fails patients and their families and adds pressure to an already overstretched healthcare system. Access to these therapies could mean fewer hospital visits and lower ongoing medication costs for patients and our healthcare system.
Investing in access today helps ensure that patients continue to benefit from new treatments tomorrow. When innovation is valued, it fuels the R&D that leads to the next generation of therapies.
Science is ready. Patients are waiting. The time to act is now.