Funded dry eye drops: how many people in the Waitematā district get them?

What this means

• More people in the Waitematā district are getting dry eye drops on funded prescriptions: 17,804 for tear-deficiency drops and 3,272 for preservative-free lubricants in 2025.
• The district's rise (40.6%) was faster than New Zealand's (32.1%) and faster than the growth in people enrolled with a general practice there (9.1%), so it is not population growth alone.
• These numbers count funded prescriptions and nothing else. Many eye lubricants are sold over the counter, and those sales are not in this data, so the figures cannot show how common dry eye is.
• NVISION's dry eye page explains what artificial tears can and cannot do, and what a dry eye evaluation measures.

How we did it

We downloaded the full data file from Health New Zealand's Pharmaceutical Data web tool (data extracted 9 July 2026) on 13 November 2026 and kept the rows for "Eye Preparations". The funded eye lubricants sit in two therapeutic groups of the Pharmaceutical Schedule: "Preparations for Tear Deficiency" (hypromellose drops) and "Preservative Free Ocular Lubricants".

We used the measure "Dispensings" (repeats included). "People" is Health NZ's count of unique people dispensed the group at least once in the year; we never add people across the two groups. District is the person's district of residence (every row used has a National Health Index number recorded for 100% of dispensings).

Rates per 1,000 divide by the number of people enrolled with a general practice in each district, from Health NZ's Virtual Diabetes Register tool. Percentage changes, rankings and rates are our own arithmetic. A separate check script downloads the full data again and confirms the headline figures against the product-level file.

Sources

• Health New Zealand: Pharmaceutical Data web tool: full data download, extract of 9 July 2026, 2021 to 2025; technical document in the tool
• Health New Zealand: Virtual Diabetes Register web tool: people enrolled with a general practice by district, 2025, used as the denominator for rates

Limits

• The data covers funded community dispensings. Drops bought over the counter, given in hospital or supplied in bulk are not counted.
• A rise in funded dispensings can come from more people with dry eye, more people diagnosed, more prescribing, or changes to which products are funded. This data cannot tell these apart.
• Carbomer gel dispensings fell sharply in 2025. We report the numbers as published and do not know the reason.
• People can live in one district and fill prescriptions in another; Health NZ assigns each dispensing to the district of residence.
• The enrolled population is a stand-in for district population: not everyone is enrolled with a general practice.

Cite this study

NVISION Eyecare (2026). Funded dry eye drops: how many people in the Waitematā district get them? Published 13 November 2026. nvision.nz/research/dry-eye-drops-dispensed-nz

The data behind this study is in dry-eye-drops-dispensed-nz.csv, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with credit. This is general information drawn from public data, not medical advice about your own eyes.