Clinton arranges cheaper 2nd line AIDS drugs from India

[Guest guest]

Clinton arranges cheaper AIDS drugs

By Celia W. Dugger

Published: May 9, 2007

NEW YORK: Former President Bill Clinton announced that his foundation

had negotiated deep price reductions for generic versions of costly,

second-line AIDS drugs needed when the original medicines fail, as

well as for less toxic, easier-to-use first-line medicines combined

in a pill that can be taken once a day.

Clinton also forcefully endorsed recent decisions by Thailand and

Brazil to break patents held by U.S. pharmaceutical companies that

are charging prices Clinton described as exorbitant, but that drug

company executives said were reasonable.

" No company will live or die because of high price premiums for AIDS

drugs in middle-income countries, but patients may, " Clinton said

Tuesday.

The new prices would halve the cost of the drugs for better-off

developing countries in Latin America and Asia and cut prices by 25

percent in poor countries, which were already paying lower prices,

the foundation said. The second-line medicines will be bought with

more than $100 million raised by a group of countries led by France.

The improved first-line therapies will largely be financed by the

Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and other donors.

Second-line drugs have typically cost about 10 times as much as first-

line therapies. Costs have ballooned in Brazil and Thailand, which

began programs to provide universal access to AIDS treatment years

before African countries did, as patients have developed resistance

to generic first-line treatments and move to brand-name second-line

drugs.

The Clinton Foundation's willingness to buy the generic drugs from

the Indian manufacturers Cipla and Matrix will give developing

countries leverage in bargaining with U.S. companies for lower prices

on branded anti-retroviral drugs and may embolden some to follow

Brazil and Thailand in overriding patents, AIDS activists said.

But developing countries still have reason to worry about retaliation

from drug companies and trade sanctions by the United States.

This year, Abbott Laboratories, based in Illinois, withdrew new

drugs, including those for high blood pressure and AIDS, that it had

planned to introduce in Thailand until the override on Abbott's

patent on the second-line drug, Kaletra.

U.S. trade officials last week put Thailand on a watch list for

countries inadequately safeguarding the intellectual property rights

of American companies, noting the overriding of drug patents.

Tido von Shön-Angerer who leads Doctors Without Borders' campaign for

access to medicines, said he was unsure whether the recent

developments would encourage developing countries to exercise their

rights under international trade rules more freely, to make or import

generic drugs. " There's a strong chilling effect from the U.S.

action, " he said.

Drug company executives on Tuesday strongly defended their policies

of charging better-off developing countries more for AIDS drugs than

they did for poor countries, as well as the role of patents, which

give inventor companies a monopoly on the sale of a drug, in

stimulating the development of new drugs.

Smoter, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said patents were

needed " to ensure innovation in the future " but declined to respond

to Clinton's comment Tuesday that " Abbott has been almost alone in

its hard-line position here over what I consider to be a life and

death matter. "

Abbott had been charging $2,200 annually per patient for Kaletra in

middle-income developing countries, which include India, China,

Brazil and Ukraine. Last month, it dropped the price to $1,000. The

foundation's new price for the generic is $695.

Sturchio, a vice president at Merck in New Jersey, said his

company strived to balance providing the broadest possible access to

AIDS drugs while maintaining financial incentives to attract

companies to conduct research and development on new drugs.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/09/news/aids.php