Guest guest Posted October 1, 2003 Report Share Posted October 1, 2003 Cross posted from [internationaltreatmentpreparedness] CD4 testing for US$ 2.20 per test would be an interesting information for Indian activists, PLWHAS and health care providers. [Moderator] Dear , Thank you very much for your E-mail and the important information. Your effort to inform scientists and programme managers and to find out information about CD4 test costs for different countries is most valuable. The currently prohibitive price level for CD4 counting in your area certainly will be limiting the planned scaling-up of programmes against HIV/AIDS. Reading about prices of US-$ 56 (St. Lucia) or even US-$ 100 (Jamaica) is quite shocking if one considers that more than 90% are pure reagent margin for the companies offering so called " closed systems " where the reagents MUST (!) be taken from the manufacturer of the CD4 counting system. On the other hand, it is easy to understand that the huge market of CD4 counting with these high margins will be protected from those companies under all circumstances. As now in Africa and Asia (hopefully soon in your region and Latin Africa in complete) the CD4 test at EUR (or US-$ 2,20) is already implented, this message will be transferred to the industrialized countries where CD4 counting is the largest business in Flow Cytometry, mainly other purposes besides HIV/AIDS e.g. for quality control in blood products, transfusion medicine, etc. This will result in enormous pressure towards the companies to lower the CD4 counting prices also in the rich countries - comparable to what happened with the ARVs. Therefore, I take the courage to give some very basic information about what can be offered (and in fact what is already widely in use in Sub-Saharan Africa) in any region worldwide at the same cost level: Studying the existing methods of CD4 cell counting during the last two years we have seen that there is an urgent need for new proposals which allows to offer CD4 counting to all of those AIDS patients who cannnot afford to pay the actual high costs for this diagnosis or who cannot reach the high level medical centers. Because of the increasing disaster a lot of effort have been spent to reduce the costs for the CD4/CD8 cell counting. Today it can be clearly stated that there is no need or justification to accept higher costs for the CD4 cell counting than EUR 2 (U.S. $2.20 per test) Our clinically validated and in international peer-reviewed journals published affordable CD4 cell counting technique is combined with the highest possible accuracy. At the Barcelona AIDS conference the experts have officially declared the flow cytometry CD4 counting as the " Gold Standard " , and it has been proposed to use flow cytometry in high level hospitals exclusively while less accurate (no " Gold Standard " methods) are used in smaller medical stations. Now a completely new situation is reached: the " Gold Standard " technique flow cytometry can today be offered at revolutionary low costs to everybody everywhere even in the rural areas and in far remote places as well as resource-poor settings. More than this, the new technique offered is a completely " open system " which allows the use of generic anitbodies or any other third supplier product. In a next step our collegues from the University of Münster will transfer their knowledge to set up local production facilities for reagents required for CD4 counting in order to give to the different governments control over antibody prices, availability, and quality. In addition to this, some interesting new high tech jobs will be created in these countries. We are convinced that in the field of HIV/AIDS taking profit out of reagents like it is known from the conventional methods, which cost between US-$ 30 and US-$ 120, is out of any moral and ethic responsibility. If manufacturers of CD4 counting technology should not be able to live from their hardware, those systems eating very expensive tests are obsolete for scaling up the ambitious programmes in your and any other region. In summary, CD4 counting can now be offered at the mentioned price of EUR 2 (U.S. $2.20) per test as this already is reality in more than 20 countries in Africa and Asia. Higher prices are only supporting solely the making of profit and limiting the potential of reaching a much broader range of patients. Should you or anyone of your collegues require more detailed information please do not hesitate to contact me again at anytime. Again, warm thanks for your initiative. Best regards Roland Roland Göhde HIV/AIDS Project Coordinator E-mail: <roland.goehde@...> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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