The South African Competition Commission confirmed on Tuesday that it has received a complaint against pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) seeking the British drug-maker to allow licensing and manufacturing of life-saving Aids drugs by generic makers.
The complaint has been brought by Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest AIDS organisation in the US, which operates the Ithembalabantu Clinic, a free Aids treatment clinic in Durban in South Africa, in conjunction with the Network of Aids Communities in South Africa (NetCom SA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in the coastal city.
”Glaxo fiddles while South Africa burns,” said Michael Weinstein, AHF’s President, from Washington, DC. ”We are filing this complaint against GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in South Africa today to prevent the ongoing irreparable harm that is occurring both in South Africa and throughout the world.
”GSK’s stranglehold on key Aids drug patents and their unfettered monopoly pricing on these life-saving medications means thousands of deaths daily. We are asking the Competition Commission to require GSK to allow licensing and manufacturing of these Aids drugs by generic manufacturers in South Africa.”
Glaxo’s current worldwide market for its Aids medications is estimated to be approximately $2-billion annually. GSK controls 40% of the lucrative US Aids drug market.
”This Competition Complaint filed by Aids Healthcare Foundation against GSK here in South Africa asserts that, ‘Excessive pricing by respondents (GSK) creates barriers to access and treatment for HIV/Aids’,” said Ronald Katz, an attorney representing AHF in its related lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in the US.
Katz, with US law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, was attending the Centenary Reunion of Rhodes Scholars in Cape Town.
”As in our pending US court case, AHF wants to break down these barriers — GSK’s exorbitant, monopolistic pricing on many medications that weren’t even invented or discovered by GSK scientists — to continue the Foundation’s commitment and mission to provide free medical care and anti-retroviral treatment to South Africans and others in need throughout the world,” Katz said.
AHF’s Competition Commission complaint seeks to obtain licensing and manufacturing concessions in South Africa for some of the GSK Aids medications which Glaxo has the exclusive right to market and sell here.
These include: zidovudine (AZT, branded as Retrovir(R), lamivudine (branded as 3TC(R)), Abacavir (branded as Ziagen(R)), and Combivir and Trizivir — Glaxo’s best selling AIDS drugs that are reformulations of existing Aids drugs that offer patients the convenience of two-in-one and three-in-one pill dosing and may offer the greatest hope for successful treatment in resource-poor settings throughout the world.
”It is unfortunate that these life-saving drugs are only available to ten percent of the people who require them,” said Dr Elijah Paul Musoke, the physician for AHF’s Ithembalabantu Clinic in Durban in his official affidavit accompanying the Competition Commission Complaint.
”The reality of the situation is that many of us are frustrated professionally, having to face death at a much more regular frequency than ever before. One would hope that there would never be a time when human life is of less value than financial gain. Believe it or not, that time is now and that place is here.”
AHF’s Ithembalabantu Clinic has close to one hundred patients currently receiving life-saving ARV therapy with an additional several hundred being monitored like Makhathini. Approximately fifty people are on the waiting list with Makhathini to begin antiretroviral therapy. – I-Net Bridge