Medicine Man

Dev Chatterjee meets Cipla’s Dr Yusuf Hamied, the man who’s taken on the MNCs by exporting cheap AIDS drugs to Africa

WORKING from his headquarters in the busy and congested Mumbai Central area, next to the city’s thriving red light areas, Indian pharmaceutical major Cipla’s chairman Dr Yusuf Hamied is a man with a mission: Trying to change lives of millions of AIDS victims around the world. From Africa to Europe and even the US, people are finally taking note of what Dr Hamied has been stressing for the last three years: Make AIDS drugs available to millions of poor victims around the world for the sake of humanity, if not for profits.

The rising figures on AIDS around the world can alarm anyone. Over 45 million people have already been infected with the HIV virus and an equal number is at high risk. To make matters worse, India is fast becoming the AIDS country of the world with Mumbai as its AIDS capital.

Even in the face of such a crisis, the Indian government remains non-committal to Cipla’s proposal of providing AIDS drugs free of cost to them. ‘‘I will not rest till the governments around the world realise the magnitude of the problem and the solutions offered by us,’’ says Dr Hamied, who spends most of his time reading medical journals and communicating with other like-minded people about the AIDS problem.
In semi-retirement, he has given the day-to-day charge of the Cipla over to his trusted lieutenants as he advocates bringing down prices of all life saving drugs for the sake of Third World victims who can never afford to pay the prices determined by the First World companies.

Dr Hamied’s solution is simple. The drugs to keep HIV at control are patented by the multinationals. These are too costly for the poor, and even the rich in India and Africa can hardly afford it. Breaking their patent, Cipla began making the same drugs at a fraction of the cost and offered it to various African governments to treat AIDS patients. A move that made MNCs like Glaxo call him a ‘‘pirate’’ and threaten to move court against him.

For the time being, Cipla is taking advantage of a loophole in the Indian patent laws to make cheap medicines. According to Indian laws, only the process used in making drugs can be patented; the final product itself can be copied freely. Of course, this will change once the WTO regulations come into effect from 2005.

Dr Hamied, one of the youngest Indians at 23 to get his PhD from Cambridge, London, says governments around the world — especially India — must take an urgent view to make cheap versions of AIDS medicines available to people. ‘‘As an Indian, I think my first priority is to my country. India has millions of AIDS victims and despite my offer to make the drugs free, I haven’t got a favourable response,’’ he says.

It was Dr Hamied’s father who founded Cipla way back in 1935 and contributed to Indian freedom struggle in a big way. Dr Hamied has followed suit by setting off a different kind of revolution: Making AIDS drugs at an affordable cost. ‘‘Till recently, AIDS was considered as a death sentence. Not anymore. One can lead a very normal life by taking the prescribed cocktail of drugs. India should first worry about its own people instead of worrying about the patents held by MNCs,’’ says the chemist.

Dr Hamied is not alone in this endeavour. Other Indian firms like Hyderabad-based Dr Reddy’s Aurobindo Pharma are also busy churning out drugs, for what is, unfortunately, turning out to be a very big market in the country. ‘‘Since we launched our drug... multinationals have reduced their prices by 70 per cent. Why they did not do it before,’’ asks Dr Hamied.

‘‘We do not need outsiders to tell us what is good for this country,’’ says the dollar millionaire, who owns 45 per cent of Cipla’s shares. At present, Cipla produces the triple drug combination of Lamivudine, Stavudine, and Nevurapine for which patents are held by three different agencies. Cipla is ready to offer the combination internationally at around $ 800 per patient per year. A price that the MNCs are finding very difficult to match.

‘‘Forget AIDS, we have the world’s biggest population of diabetes... each year we get over 2 million cases of tuberculosis. More than 70 per cent of world’s leprosy patients are in this country. It’s time we woke up to the realities facing us,’’ says the 65-year-old non-resident Indian who shifted from Mumbai to London soon after the 1992-93 riots.

Preaching like an experienced professor, Dr Hamied says it’s the lack of one responsible person which has let Indian health care go out of hand as is evident from overflowing hospitals and expensive medicines. ‘‘While managing Cipla, I’ve realised that if we make one person responsible for a certain job, it makes things better for all. Similarly, India must have one person responsible and accountable for all the health care problems. The Indian health ministry is doing too many things at a time to take care of AIDS problem,’’ says he. On the other hand, the National AIDS Control Organisation is steeped too much into red tape to take urgent action.

After the Union government abolished excise duties on anti-AIDS drugs in Budget 2002 — one of Dr Hamied key demands to make the drug cheaper — he now prescribes that Indian government should distribute AIDS drugs at its hospitals and primary health centres so that the poor don’t have to buy medicines from stores which increases the cost of the drugs due to the retailer’s and stockist’s margins.

He also advocates that India must make AIDS test mandatory while doling out licenses for commercial vehicles, before marriage and in the first few weeks of pregnancy. Also, he says, employers can make AIDS test test compulsory at regular intervals but should not throw out infected people.

Behind Dr Hamied’s cool posture, lies a canny businessman. He confesses that he left India for London as wealth tax and other taxes are bleeding the industrialists heavily over here. But he has personal reasons too. ‘‘During 1992-93 Mumbai riots, there were rioters right in front of Cipla’s gates in Mumbai Central killing and maiming people. There was no security, no police and no army. We were just sitting ducks.’’

‘‘Something snapped soon after when a journalist asked me what I feel about the riots as a prominent Muslim. I asked him why don’t you ask me how I feel as an Indian Jew as my mother was a Jew,’’ says he.

‘‘I left India but I can never forget what Mumbai means to me,’’ he says. His grandparents were Holocaust victims and he does not want history to repeat itself.