[e-drug] Clinton foundation announces a bargain on generic AIDS drugs

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E-DRUG: Clinton foundation announces a bargain on generic AIDS drugs
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[Important price reductions for ARVs again! Copied as fair use (IHT/BBC) WB]

Clinton foundation announces a bargain on generic AIDS drugs
By Celia W. Dugger
Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Former President Bill Clinton announced Tuesday that his foundation had
negotiated deep price reductions for generic versions of costly, second-line
AIDS drugs needed when the original medicines fail, as well as for less
toxic, easier-to-use first-line medicines combined in a pill that can be
taken once a day.

Standing next to Thailand's health minister, Clinton also forcefully
endorsed recent decisions by Thailand and Brazil to break patents held by
American pharmaceutical companies that are charging prices Clinton described
as exorbitant, but that drug company officials said were reasonable.

"No company will live or die because of high price premiums for AIDS drugs
in middle-income countries, but patients may," he said.

The new prices would halve the cost of the drugs for better-off developing
countries in Latin America and Asia and cut prices by 25 percent in poor
countries, which were already paying lower prices, the foundation said. The
second-line medicines will be bought with more than $100 million raised by a
group of countries led by France. The improved first-line therapies will
largely be financed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria and other donors.

Second-line drugs have typically cost about 10 times as much as first-line
therapies. Costs have ballooned in Brazil and Thailand, which began programs
to provide universal access to AIDS treatment years before African countries
did, as patients have developed resistance to generic first-line treatments
and have moved to brand-name second-line drugs.

The Clinton Foundation's willingness to buy the generic drugs from the
Indian manufacturers Cipla and Matrix will give developing countries
leverage in bargaining with American companies for lower prices on branded
antiretroviral drugs and may embolden some to follow Brazil and Thailand in
overriding patents, AIDS activists said.

But developing countries still have reason to worry about retaliation from
drug companies and trade sanctions by the United States. This year, Abbott
Laboratories, based in Illinois, withdrew new drugs, including those for
high blood pressure and AIDS, that it had planned to introduce in Thailand
until the override on Abbott's patent on the second-line drug, Kaletra.

United States trade officials last week put Thailand on a watch list for
countries inadequately safeguarding the intellectual property rights of
American companies, noting the overriding of drug patents.

Tido von Shoen-Angerer, who leads the campaign by Doctors Without Borders
for access to medicines, said he was unsure whether the recent developments
would encourage developing countries to exercise their rights under
international trade rules more freely to make or import generic drugs.

"There's a strong chilling effect from the U.S. action," he said.

Drug company officials Tuesday strongly defended their policies of charging
better-off developing countries more for AIDS drugs than they did for poor
countries, as well as the role of patents, which give inventor companies a
monopoly on the sale of a drug, in stimulating the development of new drugs.

Jennifer Smoter, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said patents were needed "to
ensure innovation in the future" but declined to respond to Clinton's
comment that "Abbott has been almost alone in its hard-line position here
over what I consider to be a life and death matter."

Abbott had been charging $2,200 annually per patient for Kaletra in
middle-income developing countries, which include India, China, Brazil and
Ukraine. Last month, it dropped the price to $1,000. The foundation's new
price for the generic is $695.

Jeffrey Sturchio, a vice president at Merck in New Jersey, says his company
strives to balance providing the broadest possible access to AIDS drugs
while maintaining financial incentives to attract companies to conduct
research and development on new drugs.

Brazil and Thailand have overridden Merck's patent on the AIDS drug
efavirenz, an ingredient of the new, improved first-line AIDS therapies.
Merck had been charging Brazil $577 annually per patient, a price it agreed
to drop to $400 a year after Brazil said it was considering overriding the
patent. The Clinton Foundation's new price for the generic drug is $164.

---

BBC
Clinton unveils Aids drugs deal
Former US President Bill Clinton has unveiled a major deal with two Indian
drugs companies to provide cheaper HIV/Aids drugs to developing nations.

The Clinton Foundation's agreement will cut the cost of what are known as
second line anti-retrovirals by 25-50%.

Second line drugs are used when cheaper and earlier forms of treatment fail.

The new generic drugs will be made available to people with HIV/Aids in more
than 60 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Mr Clinton said seven million people in those countries were in need of
treatment for HIV/Aids, but could not afford it.

                                                                            
   This drug represents the best chance that science has to offer and we're

   announcing this price to help national governments plan for the use of

   the product in the future

   Bill Clinton

 

The former US president said the deal, forged between the Clinton Foundation
and Indian companies Cipla Ltd and Matrix Laboratories Ltd, was
"groundbreaking".

He said that the pact, made in partnership with international drug purchase
facility Unitaid, would sharply reduce the costs of treating people living
with HIV/Aids in many developing countries.

He said the two companies had worked with the foundation to reduce
production costs, partly through the use of cheaper materials and partly
through improved technique.

'Best hope'

"Less than a year after the launch of an Aids treatment that is one pill,
once a day, which is so much easier for people to take, we're announcing a
price of less than a dollar a day for developing countries," Mr Clinton said
in a speech at the Clinton Foundation's offices in New York.

"This represents a 45% saving over the price now available in Africa, and up
to a 67% saving in many middle income countries," Mr Clinton added.

The lower cost, once-daily pill combines the drugs tenofovir, lamivudine and
efavirenz.

"This drug represents the best chance that science has to offer and we're
announcing this price to help national governments plan for the use of the
product in the future," Mr Clinton said.

Mr Clinton was joined by the health ministers of Thailand and Kenya, the
chairman of Matrix and France's ambassador to the US as he made the
announcement.

'Sky-high costs'

A spokesman from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, Kingsley
Moghelu, told the BBC that the deal will make a big difference in the lives
of people requiring these drugs:

   It takes the fight against Aids really where it is most important

   Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria spokesman Kingsley Moghelu

 

"It takes the fight against Aids really where it is most important, " he
said.

"Second-line therapies are atrociously expensive. They cost 10 times more
than first-line therapies.

"Whether or not you can afford to buy the medicines, if you need those
medicines, is often the difference between life and death."

Since leaving office in 2001, Bill Clinton has used the foundation that
carries his name to tackle the global Aids epidemic.

Some 750,000 people are currently receiving drug treatments for Aids through
the foundation.

The disease now affects some 40 million people globally, and has killed 25
million since it was first identified in the 1970s.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6637385.stm

Published: 2007/05/09 02:03:24 GMT

C BBC MMVII