8 February 2001
New York, US — An Indian drug manufacturer, Cipla Ltd., has offered to sell AIDS drugs at a considerably lowered price to Doctors Without Borders for its work in Africa, the US media has reported.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Cipla has agreed to sell the generic versions of the triple-therapy drug cocktails for the treatment of AIDS at a price of 350 US dollars per person per year.
According to the arrangement, the Bombay-based company would, however, sell the drugs to government programmes at a price of 600 dollars per person per year.
The drugs are Stavudine, Lamivudine and Nevirapine, which are used in combination.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company of the US holds the patent on Stavudine; Britain's Glaxo-Wellcome holds the patent on Lamuvidine while Germany's Boerhinger Ingelheim holds the patent on Nevirapine.
These Western multinational companies sell the drugs in the western markets at between 10,000 and 15,000 dollars per person per year.
The US usually allows monopoly rights to drug companies that come out with new drug therapies to manufacture and sell the drugs at high price to recover their investment in research.
But following enormous pressure on the western drug manufacturers to make these drugs affordable to countries suffering from a devastating AIDS epidemic, the companies announced early in 2000 that they would lower the prices of those drugs on country-by-country basis.
Uganda, Senegal and Rwanda have so far reached an agreement with the companies.
Even though the multinational companies have not released the price at which they are to sell the drugs to these countries, an official of Doctors Without Borders has said it is 1,000 dollars per person per year.
Cipla's chairman, Yusuf Hamied was quoted explaining that the 350-dollar price of his drugs for Doctors Without Borders was below cost, but that the company could break even at the 600- dollar price for government AIDS programmes.
"This is the only way to break the stranglehold of the multinationals," he said.
But the multinationals are expected to fight his plan. It is reported that Cipla had late last year to withdraw from an arrangement to sell a generic version of an AIDS drug to Ghana at a lower price when Glaxo-Wellcome, which holds the patent on the drug, threatened to sue.
Hamied, who is scheduled to meet with Doctors Without Borders on 15 February to discuss strategies for the arrangement, has said he will sell as many doses of the drugs to the charity organisation as it wants.
The arrangement is expected to allow the doctors' group to increase the number of their projects that give out anti-drug cocktails from five to up to 20.
The group has 40 AIDS projects in developing countries, about half of them in Africa.
About 25 million of the 30 million people infected with HIV/AIDS in the world are from Africa, and high prices have made anti-AIDS drugs out of reach for patients on the Africa.
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