Cipla says AIDS drugs talks soon with WHO

Cipla says AIDS drugs talks soon with WHO
REUTERS

MUMBAI, FEB 26: Indian generic drug maker Cipla Ltd said on Monday it would soon start talks with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to supply cheap generic versions of AIDS drugs to the world's poor.

Cipla startled the global drugs industry earlier this month with an offer to supply AIDS drugs for under $1 a day to the impoverished, undercutting multinational drug firms. The offer was made to charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

"We heard from the World Health Organisation late last week that they wanted to meet us on the AIDS drugs offer," Cipla Chairman Yusuf Hamied said. "We expect a dialogue to be initiated very soon."

"We have also received letters from the European Commission saying they want to know more about our offer to MSF, and we believe the EC can fund international agencies for the purchase of AIDS drugs where required," he said.

Cipla is offering the three anti-retroviral drugs --stavudine, lamivudine and nevirapine -- at what it calls a humanitarian price of $350 per person per year to MSF.

Hamied said MSF was trying to introduce Cipla's AIDS drugs in 10 African countries and supplies to five could begin "very soon" as registration applications were being fast-tracked.

US firm Bristol-Myers Squibb holds the patent on stavudine in much of the world, Britain's GlaxoSmithKline has the patent on lamivudine and Germany's Boehringer Ingelheim owns the patent for nevirapine.

Cipla is able to manufacture the drugs because Indian patent laws protect only the processes by which drugs are made and not the products themselves.

This allows Indian companies to copy products that are underinternational patent, providing they use new processes.

Hamied played down talk that he was taking on multinationals in African markets.

"We're not interested in taking on multinationals," he said. "We have no fight with anybody."

Leading drug firms have negotiated discount deals of 60-90 per cent with Senegal, Uganda and Rwanda under a United Nations initiative, but their products are at a premium to Cipla's offer.

Senegal pays $1,008 to $1,821 per year for the combination therapy, according to MSF. The same drug cocktail would cost $10,400 per year in the United States.

Cipla's offer to MSF is aimed primarily at Africa, where anti-retroviral drugs used in the West are out of reach of virtually all the 25.3 million people on the continent that are infected with the HIV virus.

Cipla is offering the drugs to directly to African governments at $600 per person per year, but Hamied said no government had yet taken up the offer.

Hamied played down the commercial impact of the deal with MSF, saying its total sales of AIDS drugs would contribute only 2-3 per cent of the company's expected turnover of over 10 billion Rupees ($214 million) in the year to March.

Hamied said Cipla also planned to supply the triple-drug AIDS cocktail at concessional rates to Indian patients.

"We made an offer last November to supply free drugs to treat mother-to-child AIDS infections," he said.

"We should wake up to the reality that India adds 3,500 HIV positive cases every day and that a recent World Bank report says there will be 35 million cases by 2005 in India, or five percent of the adult population."

"This makes something like the (recent) earthquake in Gujarat look like a tea party," he said.

"What is happening today in Africa is likely to happen to India in 10 years' time."