Senate committee calls for medicine review

A parliamentary committee probing access to expensive cancer drugs says a complete review of Australia's medicine system is needed.

The Senate committee also wants the government to consider a national register of cancer medicines, in an attempt to ensure Australians have affordable access to innovative treatments.

The report, tabled on Thursday, says half of all Australians develop cancer over their lifetime and one in five will die from the disease.

The committee said timely and affordable access to new cancer drugs was a significant challenge for the Australian government.

That stemmed in part from the high expense of cancer medicines and Australia's small patient populations.

The sophistication of treatments for individual cancers also reduced economies of scale.

But even with subsidised medicines, many cancer patients faced significant financial hardship - particularly families dealing with rare childhood cancers.

The committee heard numerous accounts of personal struggles to access effective drugs.

"These accounts underscore the grim reality, that for cancer patients delays ... can be measured in loss of quality of life years and lives lost," the report states.

The committee said it had become evident that new and innovative cancer medicines weren't the only drugs patients were struggling to get their hands on.