Cipla slashes prices of AIDS medicines

Cipla slashes prices of AIDS medicines
SANCHITA SHARMA

NEW DELHI, FEB 15: Slashing prices of AIDS cocktails hits international pharma companies where it hurts the most -- their pockets -- and Cipla has been doing it with unflincing persistance. After getting a rap on its knuckles from Glaxo Wellcome last year for selling a generic version of the pharma major's AIDS drug in Ghana, Cipla is now offering its AIDS cocktail at a fraction of the normal price to a French doctors' group working in Africa.

The triple-therapy drug cocktail will be given at $350 a year per patient to the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize winning Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders), who will distribute it free in Africa. Cipla is to meet the doctors' group, who have been campaigning for cheaper life-saving drugs in developing countries, in the end of February to discuss details like the volume and duration of the transaction.

While confirming that Cipla would actually be losing money in the transaction, Amar Lulla, Joint Managing Director of Cipla Ltd denied that it was an exercise in breaking multinational monopoly. ``This is an exercise in corporate responsibility and we have made a similar offer to the Indian Government for Neveripine, which brings down mother to child HIV transmission,'' he says. The Government is still ``working on it,'' he said. Cipla sells the same drug cocktail in India for Rs 50,000 (US $ 1,100), which is still a fraction of the US $ 10,000 to US $ 15,000 that international pharma majors charge for it. Patents for each of Cipla's combination of two tablets of 40 mg of stavudine, two tablets of 150 mg of lamivudine and two tablets of 200 mg of nevirapine are held by international companies.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company holds the patent on stavudine, Glaxo Wellcome on lamivudine, and Boerhinger Ingelheim of Germany on nevirapine, or viramune. If the three companies decide to aggressively defend their patent rights as sole distributors worldwide, Cipla may have to back off.

As it did last year, when Glaxo Wellcome threatened Cipla with legal action when it tried to sell Duovir, its generic version of Glaxo's Combivir -- a lamivudine/zidovudine combination -- in Ghana. Even though the African patent authority said Glaxo's patents were not valid in Ghana, Cipla stopped exporting Duovir to the country. ``Glaxo Wellcome threatened us with legal action and when we wrote to them in December saying that we were ready to pay royalty for their patent, they didn't respond,'' says Lulla.

But if the Rs 1,000-crore Cipla manages to pull off its latest African adventure, the pharma multinationals may be forced to reduce the prices of their AIDS drugs in developing countries. Cipla also plans to offer its drug combinations to African governments for $600 a year per patient, which may further break multinational monopoly. With 25 million people in Africa infected with AIDS, the stakes are enormous.