Call for prostheses subsidy increase

Press, 29 June 1985, Page 14

Call for prostheses subsidy increase

The Government subsidy on prostheses (breast forms) is inadequate, say women who have had mastectomies. Breast forms range in price from about $5O to $285, yet the subsidy for the first prosthesis is only $BO, complain members of the Mastectomy Recovery Service, a voluntary organisation which visits women who have had mastectomies to give practical advice. The subsequent allowance is $4O a year. At the recent Australasian Cancer Conference held in Auckland, members of each M.R.S. group agreed to write to the Minister of Health, Dr Bassett, calling for the prosthesis subsidy to be increased. Women’s organisations are also supporting this stand. “The initial prosthesis should be free and consequent prostheses subsidies indexed to inflation,” says Mrs Sybil Tye, of the Mastectomy Recovery Service, in Christchurch. ’ “The prostheses have to come from America because it is not commercially worthwhile to manufacture them here: no single prosthesis suits everyone.” “So many women who have to have mastectomies are middle-aged, often widowed, and on a fixed income. They are having to find maybe hundreds of dollars for a prosthesis at a time of trauma when they are already vulnerable. The subsidy should be 100 per cent,” says Mrs Tye.