E-drug: BBC: Indian drugs boss hails Aids deal
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[Copied as fair use. HH]
Really interesting article about the head of Cipla. Especially
interesting is his ending comment: that he wants to see lower import
tariffs on the raw materials. How much more could that reduce
prices?
Libby Levison
International health consultant
libby@theplateau.com
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Indian drugs boss hails Aids deal
By Soutik Biswas
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/3220619.stm
Three years ago Yusuf K Hamied, head of Indian drugs company
Cipla, stunned a European Commission medical meeting in Brussels
by offering to sell anti-Aids drugs at a fraction of the going rate. He
announced that he could sell a three-drug anti-retroviral combination
for around $800 per patient per year. Big brand-name pharmaceutical
companies were then selling their Aids drugs at $12,000 per patient
per year. The following year, in 2001, Dr Hamied declared he was
ready to sell the drugs even more cheaply - at about $300 per patient
per year. Last week, Dr Hamied won a major victory when former US
president Bill Clinton brokered a deal whereby four companies
making cheap, generic Aids drugs could begin supplying to millions of
people in developing countries. One of them is Cipla, India's third
largest drug company. It is now offering to sell a three-drug anti-Aids
cocktail for $140 per patient per year "subject to some conditions".
'Generic drugs are now respectable'
The generic drug company, set up by Dr Hamied's father in Bombay
(Mumbai) in 1935, makes some 800 drugs - 20 of them anti-Aids
ones - and exports to around 140 countries. It is legal in India to copy
a drug designed abroad and sell it in the market - as long as the
company can prove that it used a different manufacturing process.
Dr Hamied says the Clinton Foundation's endeavour has given a
greatly-needed shot in the arm to generic drugs. "Generic drug
companies, especially from India, have now got respectability, quality
and trust," he told BBC News Online from Frankfurt where was
attending a pharmaceutical fair. "Multinationals have been running us
down for years. Now there's international recognition of our quality
and service." Last year Cipla won the approval of the World Health
Organisation (WHO) to market the Aids drugs whenever local
governments allow their sale.
`Pushy drug dealer'
The Cambridge-educated Dr Hamied, 67, has been described as a
"pushy drug dealer" and a "generic drugs maverick". He feels that his
three-year battle for cheaper Aids drugs for poorer nations has had a
multiplier effect. "The fact that the MNCs have reduced prices [of their
Aids drugs] from $12,000 to three to four times the present prices of
generic companies proves that their conscience has been pricked,"
says Dr Hamied. "Remember, most of the Aids drugs were not
originally invented by these companies - they are mostly in-license
products."
But offering to supply cheap Aids drugs is only half the battle. Mr
Clinton hopes that up to two million people will have received the
cut-price drugs by 2008. But Dr Hamied says governments around
the world need to take major initiatives to fund the purchase of
cheaper drugs. "It just does not start and finish with the supply of
drugs. There's medicare and continuing tests that cost money," he
said.
Free offerings
"Supplying cheap drugs in isolation will not solve the problem." He
singled out the governments of Brazil and Uganda as being pro-active
in controlling the spread of the disease in their countries. Cipla has
registered its anti-Aids drugs in 65 countries, and is already supplying
to 59 of them. The company already supplies one drug - to stop
mother-to-child transmission - free of charge. Cipla has also offered
free technology to make anti-Aids drugs "to state-owned companies
in all Third World countries", says Dr Hamied.
But he is not very happy with the way the Indian Government has
moved to tackle Aids. India has an estimated four million cases of
HIV. Dr Hamied wants lower duties on imported raw materials for the
drugs, government distribution and slashing of local taxes to make
the drugs still cheaper. "We need more action than words in India
today," said Dr Hamied.
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