The Hindu Business Line : Fighting pharma profits to fight AIDS

There is a possibility of controlling HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and thus extending the life of patients. Thus assured the President, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, when addressing the members of both Houses of Parliament on the occasion of World AIDS Day on December 1.

The First Citizen drew the attention of his audience to the prohibitive cost of medication Let's meet a different doctor, Dr Yusuf Hamied of Cipla, who has been fighting a different battle against AIDS. "Under official prodding in India, he had `reverse-engineered' the early anti-AIDS drug AZT (azidothymidine) for use at home," writes Peter Gill in his recent book `The Politics of AIDS,' from Viva (www.vivagroupindia.com) . What happened to the drug? "India has had an exceptionally poor record in making treatment available for its own millions with HIV, and Cipla's AIDS drugs were left on the shelf."

Interestingly, Cipla had an offering for the international market - `a drug called Triomune which was a copy of three foreign-patented pharmaceuticals combined together in one pill'. It seems two of these pills were enough instead of the usual `eight tablets to be taken each day'. Africa wanted Hamied's drug, in quantities, narrates Gill.

In the year 2000, when contacted by Jamie Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, "Cipla was prepared to sell Triomune for between $600 and $800 per patient per year. It was a huge saving on the $12,000 that the cocktail of three individual drugs would otherwise have cost."

Love was looking for something better for the patients. He had `an encyclopaedic knowledge of the way patents and intellectual property rights obstruct the delivery of health to poor people,' recounts Gill.

Thus, it was Love who posed a direct question to Dr Hamied, in early 2001: "Is there any chance of providing that AIDS cocktail at a dollar a day?" Dr Hamied said there was! At $350 per patient per year.

"The story appeared on the front page of The New York Times on February 7, 2001... The Cipla offer seemed to signal that the days when poverty alone could price poor people out of their health might be numbered."

And there was more: In South Africa, the move `set the stage for a court drama which represented the single greatest reverse ever suffered by the pharmaceutical industry'.

Indian companies are taking the war against prices further. For instance, Rachel Barron's article dated November 30 on www.redherring.com informs one about Bill Clinton's Foundation striking a deal with Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories `to provide antiretroviral drugs for $0.16 per day, or less than $60 annually, per child'. The price is about 45 per cent less than the lowest rates available for low-income countries, says Barron.

It can be lower still, perhaps. For, a November 14 press release on www.pharmalive.com cites Dr Hamied on how the high price of one-pill-a-day antiretroviral treatment `Viraday' is, in part, `due to excessive custom duties and taxes imposed on Cipla by the Indian Government on drugs distributed within India'.

E&OE@TheHindu.co.in