12 July 2022
Paul Jones
[FYI request #19705 email]
Tēnā koe Paul,
Your Official Information Act request, reference H202208105:
Thank you for your email of 19 June 2022 requesting information relating to Depo-Provera.Your
request has been considered under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act). You requested the
following:
“… the past five years would you please provide the fol owing statistics
i) The total number of doses administered each year.
i ) The total number of unique patients who received the drug each year.”
The Ministry is unable to provide the count of unique patients who received Depo-Provera
(Medroxyprogesterone acetate) as we are unable to accurately capture the number of people who are
dispensed these items. Due to the way intra uterine devices (IUDs) and other long-acting reversible
contraceptives (LARCs) are distributed, the Ministry is unable to count patients who have received one as
they are ordered in bulk by practitioners, and then distributed without the practitioner reporting on who
receives them.
Therefore, the Ministry is providing the total number of Depo-Provera items reported to us. We have also
provided the order type in the table below, showing whether we have a record that Depo-Provera was
provided to an individual, or as part of a bulk supply.
Please note the fol owing when considering this data:
• The table is a count of items and not people.
• Where the National Health Index (NHI) number is not reported, or the dispensing is a bulk
claim to be distributed, no patient demographic details are available (as these are not reported
to the Ministry).
• Order Type 1 'Prescription': An order written for a patient to pick up from a community
pharmacy for their own use.
• Order Type 3 'Practitioner's Supply Order': A written order made by a prescriber for the
funded supply of pharmaceuticals for emergency use, teaching and demonstration purposes
and for provision to certain patient groups where an individual prescription is not practicable.
• Order Type 4 'Bulk Supply Order': An order made by a private hospital to a pharmacy to
obtain supplies of medicines for the hospital's patients.
TeWhatuOra.govt.nz
83 Molesworth Street, PO Box 5013
Welington New Zealand 6140
Table 1: A count of Depo-Provera injections claimed for, by order type, NHI number reporting status, and
calendar year of dispensing for the years 2017 to 2021.
Order Type
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
Total
1: Prescription
3,764
4,022
3,509
3,782
3,852
18,929
NHI number not
reported
62
36
41
36
57
232
NHI number reported
3,702
3,986
3,468
3,746
3,795
18,697
3: Practitioner's supply
order
149,251 153,208 152,350 142,050
132,207
729,066
4: Bulk supply order
226
231
193
254
158
1,062
Total
153,241 157,461 156,052 146,086
136,217
749,057
This information is extracted from the Ministry’s Pharmaceutical Collection which is a is a live dataset, whilst the
Pharmaceutical Data Web Tool is a static extract. Comparing the two extracts may result in different figures. The
Pharmaceutical Col ection only counts publicly funded, community-dispensed pharmaceuticals and
Pharmaceutical Cancer Treatments (PCT); It does not count non-PCT hospital dispensings, drugs not funded by
Pharmac, or prescriptions that were never dispensed.
I trust the information provided is of assistance. Should you have any concerns with this response, I
would encourage you to raise these with Te Whatu Ora a
t: [email address].
Alternatively, you are advised of your right to also raise any concerns with the Office of the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
: www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or by
phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Health NZ has decided to proactively
release a copy of this response on Te Whatu Ora’s website. All requester data, including your name and
contact details, wil be removed prior to release.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Gaynor Bradfield
Manager, Office of the Deputy Director General
Data and Digital