CIPLA Among preferred ARV suppliers to WHO

[Guest guest]

Ranbaxy offers low-price AIDS cocktail

Reuters 20/3/2002: India's best-selling drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories has

offered to undercut competitors to supply generic AIDS-control drugs to

international charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, the company said on Wednesday.

Ranbaxy's best offer of $295 for the three-drug cocktail undercuts the $350 per

person per year offered to MSF in February 2001 by Ranbaxy's rival, fellow

Indian drug firm Cipla Ltd, and is among the lowest in the world.

Patents for the drugs used in the cocktail are held by western multinationals,

but Indian law allows manufacturers to produce drugs that are under patent

internationally as long as they use different manufacturing processes.

" Ranbaxy has written to MSF offering a price of $295 for AIDS treatment

programmes with more than 5,000 patients, $315.65 for between 2,000 and 5,000

patients and $337 for 1,000 patients, " Ranbaxy spokesman Paresh Chaudhry told

Reuters.

Chaudhry said Ranbaxy would also offer a lower dosage combination -- used by far

fewer patients -- for $287 per patient per year.

Cipla and Ranbaxy both supply drugs to a programme to treat 10,000 AIDS patients

in Nigeria, the largest programme of its kind in Africa.

The three drugs in the cocktail are lamivudine, stavudine and nevirapine, whose

patents are respectively controlled by multinational drug companies

GlaxoKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Cipla and Ranbaxy, though much smaller in size than the multinationals, have

created ripples with their offers to sell cheap generic versions of patented

drugs in emergency situations.

Cipla's AIDS drug offer last year prompted a series of price cuts from

multinationals. And Ranbaxy created a stir at the peak of the U.S. anthrax

crisis last year by offering to supply 20 million tablets of a generic version

of Bayer's Cipro, the treatment of choice for anthrax.

CIPLA AMONG PREFERRED SUPPLIERS

Cipla was named on Wednesday in a World Health Organisation list of preferred

suppliers to anti-AIDS programmes run by U.N. agencies, while Ranbaxy was not.

Chaudhry said Ranbaxy will make its AIDS drugs at a unit at Dewas in central

India. He said that unit had been approved by South African and British drug

authorities, and WHO inspectors will visit the plant in April.

Ranbaxy shares ended up 0.17 percent at 875.30 rupees, against the Bombay

benchmark's rise of 0.59 percent.

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[Guest guest]

You have shared an excellent information related to the lifeline of the HIV

effected people. Please accept our regards for the commendable work and

information support you have provided.

We are equally thankful to group through whom we have

regularly recieved valuable information and support for the cause.

Can you also help us in identifying people/ institutions/ and resources

from where we can recieve medicine for the HIV effected on reduced rates and

if possible some of it near expiry drugs/partly donation, as we are trying

to set us a self-help group of HIV effected people/ families in the state of

Uttar Pradesh in India .

We will very much appreciate if you will be able to take out few moments out

of your busy schedule and help us.

with regards,

Sanjeev Jain

E mail:sparshaids@...>

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