E-DRUG: Nigeria reaches deal with Indian firm to buy generic AIDS drugs
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Besides Nigeria, also private companies in South Africa are considering
buying generics (under compulsory license), as the price difference with
current private sector prices is between USD 20-30 million per 10,000
people per year!
Crossposted from Pharm-policy with thanks.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/116/nation/Nigeria_reaches_deal_with_Indian_firm_to_buy_AIDS_drugs+.shtml
NN]
Nigeria reaches deal with Indian firm to buy AIDS drugs
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 4/26/2001
ABUJA, Nigeria - In the first substantial purchase of AIDS cocktails by an
African nation, Nigeria will announce a deal today with the Indian generic
drug maker Cipla to buy enough drugs to treat 10,000 people a year.
Cipla officials, attending a summit on AIDS and other infectious diseases,
told the Globe that the company agreed to reduce the price of a three-drug
combination to $350 for Nigeria, lowering its previous $600 offer for
low-income countries. Nigerian officials confirmed the terms of the
agreement.
While the $3.5 million deal for Nigeria is just a small step toward
addressing treatment for an estimated 2.6 million Nigerians infected with
the human immunodeficiency virus, it sends a strong message to Western
donors that African countries will foot part of the cost of trying to
control the pandemic.
It also gives the first sliver of hope for some Africans living with the
disease that antiretroviral drugs readily available in the West since 1995
will no longer be denied them for financial reasons. Cipla officials
revealed yesterday that they are negotiating AIDS-drugs deals with Cameroon,
Ivory Coast, and Algeria. Senegal and Uganda offer small-scale treatment
programs.
''If any government wants to give away the drug free to people with AIDS,
Cipla will basically sell it to them at the cost to us,'' said Jaideep A.
Gogtay, Cipla's medical director. While he said that the Bombay-based
company will look at each deal country by country, ''we are prepared to make
the $350 offer to other countries.''
In February, Cipla shocked public health officials and pharmaceutical
companies by announcing that it would slash the price of its generic AIDS
cocktail to $350 for Doctors Without Borders and $600 for low-income
countries. The move caused private drug companies to slash prices as well,
and for the first time some of the 25 million Africans infected with the
virus learned that they had the possibility of getting treatment.
While Doctors Without Borders just began a treatment project for 150 people
with HIV in Cambodia and hopes to begin programs in Guatemala and Thailand,
no countries had appeared to be in line to make deals with Cipla. That
raised doubts about the poor countries' commitment to fight the disease.
But for many countries, the cost still remains prohibitively high, and
vastly out of proportion to meager national health budgets that are often
under $10 per capita.
Nigeria's purchase plan won immediate praise at the AIDS conference. It will
be buying the drugs stavudine, lamivudine, and nevirapine.
''Enabling wider access to HIV care gives a lot more meaning to prevention
of AIDS,'' David Nabarro, the top aide to the World Health Organization
director general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, said in an interview. ''It also
gives a lot more meaning to improving access to counseling and testing.
For years before, there has been nothing to say to HIV patients, except that
if we treat your pneumonia, you might have a few more weeks to live.''
Nabarro said that while the Nigerian deal could be viewed as a symbolic
purchase, given the depth of the problem, ''We'd love it to become real,
more widespread. The challenge now is to get the health systems to
work.''
President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria told Jeffrey D. Sachs, the director
of the Center for International Development at Harvard University, about
the purchase during a meeting at the leader's office. Sachs immediately
offered the services of Harvard specialists to set up a delivery system.
''We could help with the training by bringing experts who have experience in
how to oversee the use of antiretroviral drugs,'' Sachs said.
Harvard's School of Public Health already has strong ties with Nigeria's
health plan. Using a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, Harvard will study health systems in three states in Nigeria
during the next several years.
The health school's dean, Barry Bloom, also is attending the AIDS summit,
which is expected to attract 15 to 25 African heads of state and Bill
Clinton for the deliberations today and tomorrow.
Daniel Berman, coordinator of the Doctors Without Borders Access to
Essential Medicines campaign, called Nigeria's agreement with Cipla ''very
significant.'' But he said it would be vital for the country to make a
long-term commitment to purchasing the drugs as well as ''gearing up the
public sector so they can effectively administer the drugs.''
In another development at the conference, the World Health Organization
released a Boston University study that found five African countries had
reduced or abolished taxes and tariffs on insecticide-treated bed nets
in the past year.
The bed nets have helped reduce mortality from malaria among children by
an average of 25 percent, according to surveys in three countries.
--
Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.
Information and archive http://www.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.