E-drug: Pfizer weighs request to cut price of Fluconazole
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Pfizer Weighs Requests to Cut Price of Drug By Michael Waldholz
03/24/2000
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 2000, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
NEW YORK -- Pfizer Inc., under growing pressure from AIDS advocacy
groups, said it is considering demands to lower the price of its
powerful antifungal drug, Diflucan, for patients in the developing
world.
The advocacy groups, including the international organization, Doctors
Without Borders , have been urging the drug maker to either reduce
Diflucan's price or allow poor nations, such as those in Africa, to
sanction the sale of inexpensive generic versions of the medicine. The
drug, which generated about $1 billion in world-wide revenue for
Pfizer last year, is effective in fighting lethal fungal infections
common among people in poorer nations who are infected by HIV, the
AIDS virus. Priced at about $17 for a daily dose in South Africa, the
drug is beyond the reach of most AIDS patients in developing nations.
In the most dramatic action yet, four AIDS activists late Wednesday
slipped past security guards at Pfizer's midtown headquarters here and
made their way to the 23rd-floor office of William Steere, the
company's chairman and chief executive officer. According to Eric
Sawyer, a founding member of the activist group, ACT-UP New York, Mr.
Sawyer and three others refused to leave the area directly outside Mr.
Steere's office until they were given a meeting with Pfizer officials
about Diflucan.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Sawyer said he didn't talk to Mr.
Steere, who shut his door when the activists tried to enter his
office. Instead, Mr. Sawyer's group met for a half-hour with James
Brigates, the world-wide product manager for Diflucan, along with
another Pfizer official involved in African issues.
A Pfizer spokesman said the company couldn't comment on security
issues, but confirmed that Mr. Sawyer and his group did meet with Mr.
Brigates at Pfizer's headquarters. Brian McGlynn, the spokesman, said
Mr. Brigates told the group that Pfizer was struggling with the issue
and would give the activists a response to their demands by April 3.
Mr. McGlynn said Pfizer has been in contact with the Treatment Action
Campaign, a coalition of South African AIDS activists, who have been
pressing the Diflucan pricing issue for several weeks.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders said it delivered a letter
to Pfizer officers in 18 countries asking the company to reduce
Diflucan's price in South Africa and elsewhere. "In South Africa,
where one company holds exclusive marketing rights, the cost of [the
drug] is nearly 15 times higher than in Thailand where the drug is not
patent protected," the group said in their March 13 press release.
Diflucan, also known by its generic name of fluconazole, is effective
against cryptococcal meningitis, a common systemic fungal infection
that can be deadly to people whose immune systems have been crippled
by HIV. The fungal infection can kill within a month or so, but daily
Diflucan treatments can keep the fungal infection at bay.
The drug is available for about $1.20 a day in Thailand, where
Pfizer's patent isn't being enforced and the drug is made by generic
drug manufacturers. It is, however, illegal right now for any generic
makers to sell the drug elsewhere.
The activist effort is part of a broad campaign by activists and
public health groups to get large drug makers to reduce the prices of
AIDS drugs or allow for the marketing of generic versions of the
medicines in poorer nations. The campaign is expected to spread in
coming weeks as activists gear up for the World Conference on AIDS,
which will be meeting in July in Durban, South Africa.
# # #
Daniel Berman
MSF's Access to Essential Medicines Campaign
daniel_berman@geneva.msf.org
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