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South Africa: State Call for Aids Drug Bids
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
28 February 2008
Posted to the web 28 February 2008
Tamar Kahn
Cape Town
The health department has called for bids for the next AIDS-drug tender, a move keenly awaited by local pharmaceutical firms that invested heavily in developing capacity to make generic copies of patented antiretroviral medicines.
SA has the world's biggest caseload of HIV patients, with about 5,4-million people infected with the virus that causes AIDS. The state began providing free treatment to eligible patients at the end of 2003, procuring drugs from multinational firms and two local generic manufacturers, Aspen Pharmacare and Cipla-Medpro (now part of Enaleni).
This time around, competition is expected to be stiffer, as rival generic drug maker Adcock Ingram has entered the field, and all three firms have registered new generic AIDS drugs with the Medicines Control Council.
The tender documents, which have been seen by Business Day, call for companies to submit bids for 10 AIDS drugs, including for the first time tenofovir. This is important for patients, as tenofovir is used in people at high risk of lactic acidosis. This is a potentially lethal side-effect that affects a significant minority of patients taking stavudine, which is widely prescribed at present.
The two-year tender is due to run from June 1 to May 31 2010. The documents do not indicate how many patients the government expects to treat or how much it has budgeted for these medicines. The health department had not responded to Business Day questions at the time of going to press.
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Rival firms will be scored with up to 90 points allocated for price, nine for local manufacturing capacity and one for black ownership. Only products registered with the council will be considered. Makers of generic drugs must also have licences to do so from the patent holders.
Stavros Nicolaou, speaking for industry association Pharmaceuticals Made in SA, said: "We welcome the measures to give preference to local manufacture. These include provisions to curb dumping and extra points for local manufacture." The previous AIDS drug tender allocated four points to local manufacture.
Adcock Ingram MD Jonathan Louw said he was disappointed in the number of points allocated to local manufacture. "We were hoping for 20%-25%," he said. Adcock had licences to make generic versions of most products called for, but was awaiting registration for products, including its generic didanosine, lopinavir, ritonavir and stavudine, he said.
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