back
|
 |
Cut-Rate AIDS
By: Frederic Golden
Time Magazine, March 15, 2001
By the cruel calculus of the AIDS epidemic, the best anti-AIDS drugs almost never reach the millions of people who need them most. In the face of the widespread epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa--where more than 25 million people are HIV positive--pharmaceutical companies have been under increasing pressure to supply the developing world with cut-rate medicines. But no matter how much they trim prices on a combination-drug regimen that can cost $15,000 a year in the U.S., it's never quite enough to make a dent in countries where per capita annual income is only a few hundred dollars.
Now the deadly stalemate seems to be breaking up. Last week, even as the big pharmaceutical companies went to court to keep generic copies of their drugs out of South Africa, one of the biggest of these, Merck, announced it would slash prices of two of its major AIDS drugs, Crixivan and
Stocrin, an additional 40% to 55%. Other drug giants--including GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers Squibb--immediately signaled they would follow suit.
The drugmakers couched their action in philanthropic terms, but the companies have more than their reputations at stake. Generic
drugmakers, like India's Cipla Ltd. and Hetero Drugs, have already offered three-drug combos for $350 to $600 a year per patient, 40% less than the best prices offered in developing countries by Western firms.
By meeting this off-brand challenge, the drug companies hope to protect their franchise not only in impoverished Africa but also in the U.S., where drug pricing has long been a target of health activists and where a price war with generics could cut deeply into profit margins. As Merck CEO Raymond Gilmartin acknowledges, unless AIDS drugs become more generally available, "our intellectual property is at risk." |
