A dad’s battle with heart disease highlights gaps in healthcare system

At 46, Matt Goddin carries a heavy burden: a damaged heart, a dangerous genetic condition, and the fear of not being there for his children’s birthdays, graduations, and every milestone in between.

Heart disease has already claimed his grandfather and uncle at a young age. Matt doesn’t want to be next.

He wants to survive – and to be there for his wife and their three young children as they grow up.

The Palmerston North man has lived with familial dyslipidaemia – a genetic condition that makes his cholesterol dangerously high - for most of his life.

“I’ve been on medication since my late teens,” he says.

“It’s been a lifelong shadow.”

His first major heart scare came at 41.

One morning on his way home from work, he felt something wasn’t right.

“I felt weird, my arms felt strange,” he recalls. 

“I called Healthline, and within minutes, an ambulance was on its way.”

That hospital visit led to the discovery of significant narrowing in his coronary arteries. Over two procedures, Matt had four stents inserted to keep his heart beating.

Since then, Matt has returned to a relatively normal life. He stays active where possible, keeps to a strict diet, and attends regular check-ups.

But he knows the risk is far from gone, he says.

“Even on the highest medications available in New Zealand, my cholesterol is still too high.”

PCSK9s – a group of drugs that lower levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol – could give Matt a real chance at a longer, healthier life.

But they are not funded in New Zealand. 

Here, patients like Matt must either pay thousands of dollars to get PCSK9s – or go without – meaning their cholesterol levels remain dangerously high.

Trust Chief Executive Ms Letitia Harding says Matt’s situation highlights a wider national failure.

“Matt’s story is not unique – it is the reality for hundreds of New Zealand families living with inherited heart disease.

“They are being forced to live with a constant ticking time bomb inside their chest, while the treatments that could save their lives are sitting on the shelf, out of reach.”

The lack of funded treatment options for heart disease, in general, is appalling, Ms Harding says.

“We are decades behind other countries, including Australia, where these medications are already available, funded and changing lives.

“Every day we delay means more heart attacks, and more deaths that didn’t need to happen.”