The widely welcomed agreement between pharmaceutical companies and the state’s competitions body — to issue multiple generic licences for anti-retrovirals (ARVs) — will increase supply and decrease prices of these life-saving drugs.
Aids activists celebrated the agreement this week, alongside another one between the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Boehringer Ingelheim, granting the issuing of multiple generic licences. This comes more than a year after the TAC first launched a complaint at the Competition Commission against GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim for excessive pricing of ARVs.
The new agreement will allow marketplace competition to make generics. It is intended to ensure sustainable access to drugs at affordable prices. This means that, over and above the government’s ARV roll-out, the private sector will be able to buy cheaper generic drugs from doctors and pharmacies. It also means there will be an increase in local suppliers producing ARVs and less risk of an interruption in supply.
Many of the 200 patients on ARV treatment at the Helen Joseph hospital’s HIV/Aids clinic are unemployed, but some of those who do have jobs (such as domestic workers and gardeners) are being subsidised by their employers.
Sister Sue Roberts said that employed patients would now — because of the agreement — be able to receive treatment without fear of losing their jobs. ”I have patients who can’t spend time in queues at provincial hospitals. Now they can get treatment without losing their jobs as they can go to a general practitioner after work.”
The agreement is the result of a complaint lodged at the commission by HIV-positive Hazel Tau and 12 others. Tau’s ARVs are privately sponsored at the cost of about R1 200 a month. The new agreement could push the cost down to about R329 a month. ”I didn’t believe we would make it. It’s taken a long time,” she said.
The TAC, driving the campaign for access to affordable medicines, said this decision comes after many years of lobbying pharmaceutical companies.
TAC lawyer Fatima Hassan said: ”We have put the licences on a silver platter for both [the] government and the generic companies and it must now be taken advantage of by both.” The settlement is ground-breaking, she said, because multiple generic licences will produce competition, resulting in affordable drug prices for people living with HIV/Aids.
The TAC will make sure that companies making generics apply for these licences immediately and that GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim honour their agreements with the complainants and the commission.
Moreover, the TAC will try to ensure that government issues tenders for procuring generic medicines in the public sector, to ensure the roll-out of the ARV programme is implemented without undue delay. The TAC will also monitor prices to keep them as low as possible.
Before the agreement, only one licence had been issued by GlaxoSmithKline — to Aspen Pharmacare. Conditions included that they could not sell drugs to the private sector or export to African countries. Aspen was to pay a 30% royalty fee, and, because Aspen’s generic ARVs are still being registered with the Medicine Control Council, they cannot be sold or used.
”The new agreement permits licensees to export to 47 sub-Saharan countries, to sell to the public and private sector, and to import generic products that they are not making or unable to make,” said Hassan.
”All that remains is for government to issue a tender to procure the medicines.”