Ravenous kids fight funding ban

5:00AM Sunday July 06, 2008 By Anna Rushworth Pharmac may extend funding to treat children with a rare and incurable disease that leaves them permanently hungry. Only 22 New Zealand children have Prader-Willi syndrome. It's an illness that forces them go to any lengths to find food - including foraging in bins. Sufferers are born limp and struggle to develop before an insatiable hunger makes many obese. The condition, which is the subject of a TV3 documentary on Thursday, can be helped with growth hormone therapy but treatment costs about $80,000 a year. Under current Pharmac requirements, the drug is only free for children who are under a certain height - and only eight out of the 22 meet the criteria. Australia gives all child sufferers of Prader-Willi syndrome access to the treatment, regardless of their height, and it is... [read full story]