E-drug: GSK sponsors AIDS drug marketing competition
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Dear all,
GlaxoSmithKline seems to have finally come to wit's end in its attempts to
sell AIDS drugs in South Africa. The company appears to be so flummoxed by
the persistent campaigning for reduced prices of GSK drugs here that they
have been forced to turn to American students to come up with new ideas on
how to sell AIDS drugs. Details on the GSK-sponsored student competition
can be viewed at www.mba.wfu.edu/prlib/prcase0202.html. One wonders
if the participants were given copies of the Treatment Action
Campaign poster
describing the CEO of GSK South Africa as "deadlier than the virus" as part
of the preparation.
Happily, GSK seems pleased with the results. Peter Hare, GSK
Vice-President, HIV Business Unit, is quoted on the website as saying that
"We are determined to take back the best ideas we heard from the
presentations and put them into practice at GlaxoSmithKline to help the
lives of HIV patients in South Africa and around the world. There is clearly
a sense of energy to put these ideas into action. We had to have a return on
our investment and we needed some fresh ideas to justify our expenditures
and our executives' time, and the results exceeded our expectations."
Hopefully one of these fresh ideas that GSK will implement is that the
company should follow the lead of other major multinational pharmaceutical
companies and significantly reduce the private sector prices for their AIDS
drugs (unlike competitors BMS, Merck, and Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK has
insisted on offering one price to government and NGOs while charging the
private sector much higher prices). Perhaps another idea that could be
instituted with a sense of energy is that the company should move away from
the approach taken in licensing their AIDS drugs to Aspen Pharmacare (a
generic producer here), which was characterized by limitations and an
extraordinarily high royalty rate (albeit one returned to NGOs), to a system
of openly allowing any willing and capable generic producer to manufacture
and import all GSK AIDS drugs in recognition of the severity of the AIDS
epidemic in South Africa.
Best,
Toby Kasper
M�decins Sans Fronti�res
South Africa
tobyk@mweb.co.za
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