Wellington, Oct 22 NZPA - In the last year almost 150,000 patients benefited from a $40 million boost in pharmaceutical spending by the Government, Pharmac's latest annual report says.

Pharmac funded 20 new medicines and widened access to another 25 for the year ending June 2010 -- providing 149,000 extra patients access to funded medicine, according to the report.

That was the highest number of new medicines to be added to the Pharmaceutical Schedule since 1999, Pharmac acting chief executive Steffan Crausaz said.

Pharmac spent $693.8 million in the year -- including an extra $40 million agreed by the Government for pharmaceutical funding in the 2009/2010 budget.

"Pharmac hit the budget target for the year, with spending of $693.8 million compared to our budget of $694 million," Mr Crausaz said.

New medications funded by Pharmac included a new treatment for people wanting to quit smoking, an antiviral treatment for people with HIV/AIDS, and a treatment for people with chronic myeloid leukaemia.

"It's clear that without the increase in funding, we would not have been able to grow the funded medicines list by as much as we have," Mr Crausaz said.

The report showed 3.2 million New Zealanders received funded medication and 37.1 million funded prescriptions were written in the past year.