A Costa Rican view of Indian Generic ARV Pharmas

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A Costa Rican view of Indian Generic ARV Pharmas

[This message is in the context of proposed ITPS-AIDS activists

meeting with Indian Generic ARV Pharma representatives in January

05. Moderator]

1) In our region we are still concerned about lack of registration of

CIPLA/Hetero drugs in countries in the region.

Follow though by the companies that participated in the Andean

negotiations has been abysmal. In fact, it is donations from Brazil

(not sustainable) that have saved the lives of almost a thousand

people in several countries in the region because the Indian Generic

countries made no efforts to follow up on these negotiations. Also

of course PAHO and the Health Ministers share in the blame for this -

- after all the media hype, nothing else happened.

ly as much as admire Bill Haddad (CIPLA), he loves the

spotlight at the moment and then his repeated promises to follow

through on these negotiations and make sure something was done came

to nothing.

As the multi-nationals more or less boycotted the negotiations and

there was no interest or attempt to involve them more or less on

purpose, their prices remain much higher in the Andean countries (10

countries in all as the negotiations also included Chile, Argentina,

Mexico and Venezuela, so almost 200,000 people who need or will soon

be needing treatment are affected). But this is a problem in all

middle income countries where they don't need the Andean

negotiations to offer fair prices, and they are obviously not doing

so.

2) The Indian companies still tend to do much of their sales in the

region in countries where their drugs are registered though

Distributors. Because they will not release the prices that they

charge to distributors, it is impossible for us to know if the

prices charged by large distributors such as Eske in Peru, Drogeria

Humana in Honduras, and LASCO in Jamaica reflect fair mark-ups.

These prices are about $1,000 a year for Triomune and basically

similar prices for other CIPLA combinations.

3) Of course their own lack of outreach and some minimal attempt at

public relations (based around facts and science) with governments

and NGO's in the region is also damaging, and lends credibility to

those who would take advantage of the problems of WHO pre-

qualification to discredit their products. People see them as alien,

foreign and disinterested and untrustworthy.

I agree that this is also partly a lack of effort by local activists

to read WHO/MSF information and really get the facts as they are

presented but really for all practical purposes the Indian companies

have never made any attempts at outreach in the Latin American and

Caribbean region.

I personally see their distributors as greedy and narrow minded and

have talked to all of their distributors (that I am aware of).

Their attitude and lack of awareness of PLWA needs is actually

worse, in some cases, than the attitude of leading originator drug

companies. They are totally unwilling to dialogue and seem to have

very little respect for PLWA as persons.

4) There have also been interruptions of supplies in some countries,

when the number of PLWA dropped, because the distributors didn't

want to commit to having stock if they weren't sure about guaranteed

sales. I intervened with one such situation in Peru with Amar Lulla

of CIPLA in India and he did intervene with the distributor in Peru.

5) On the positive side there are some purchases going on through

the Global Fund directly with the Companies at better prices,

presumably through the Clinton Foundation in the Dominican Republic,

and with Global Fund monies in Peru and Honduras.

Other comments are welcome in response to these.

Sincerely,

Stern,

Director

Agua Buena Human Rights Association

San , Costa Rica

506-234-2411

E-mail: <rastern@...>

Cross posted from:

internationaltreatmentpreparedne

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