Own Correspondent, Cape Town | Wednesday
A DEFIANT Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has thrown down the gauntlet to “profiteering pharmaceutical companies” by smuggling a cut-price consignment of generic drugs into the country to treat HIV/Aids-related diseases, saying affordable drugs could save thousands of lives.
TAC chairman Zackie Achmat said the group has imported 5000 Biozole tablets, a tablet used for infections associated with HIV, for R1,78 each from Thailand, and will distribute them to a network of doctors and pharmacists.
Biozole is a generic equivalent of US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s Fluconazole, which Pfizer sells to the state for R28,57and the private sector for R80,24 per tablet.
Achmat, whose group faces opposition from government and multinational pharmaceutical companies for importing the unlicensed generic, said the TAC wanted to highlight the scourge of what he called “patent abuse and Aids profiteering”.
He said campaigners faced the choice of watching friends, family and children dying of the disease because the medicines that could treat it were too expensive, or they could defy patent and other trade laws.
Achmat said a sample of the drug would be provided to the Medicines Control Council with the relevant documentation for registration.
He challenged the company, other manufacturers and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association to take action against TAC for defying their Fluconazole patent and for preparing to defy patents on other HIV/Aids drugs.
“TAC will stop defying the unjust trade laws with Flucanazole once Pfizer has lowered the price to under R4,00 [per tablet] and its donation is implemented with no restrictions,” Achmat said.
The “donation” referred to a Pfizer pledge on March 31 to donate the drug free of charge to all people with HIV/Aids who could not afford it, for the treatment of cryptococcal meningitis.
Achmat denounced the donation as a public relations exercise, saying not a single capsule had yet been donated, while people who could have been saved were dying daily.