- Admonishes Gilead pharmaceutical to stop evergreening patents on Truvada, others
By Kazeem Akolawole
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has demanded open license for the generic production of HIV and hepatitis C drugs to all low- and middle-income countries, without any exception for adequate control of those diseases
It also admonished Gilead pharmaceutical company based in the United States to halt evergreening patents right on Truvada and other retroviral drugs as it described the act as an exploitation instead of innovation that should benefit humanity.
The Country Program Director, Dr. Echey Ijezie while briefing media on Tuesday in Abuja also demanded that for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gilead should also sell or license remdesivir for generic distribution at a nonprofit price.
“License technology for the production of treatment for cryptococcal meningitis to generic manufacturers and link executive compensation to the impact on positive public health outcomes and access to medicines in developing countries”.
According to him, Gilead is notorious for exploiting patent monopolies on blockbuster drugs to enrich itself and its shareholders.
“The research and development are often funded by U.S. taxpayers, but for their generosity, the public is rewarded with astronomical drug prices,” Ijezie said.
While citing instances, Ijezie said a highly effective hepatitis C drug costs $1,000 per pill, and a 12-week course of treatment has a retail price of over $90,000 in the U.S.
According to him, “A generic version of the same drug costs only $4 per pill in India, but according to Médecins Sans Frontières, Gilead has excluded 50 middle-income countries from access to the generic, discounted price.
“These excluded countries include Jamaica, Tunisia, the Philippines, Ukraine, and Venezuela, among others.
“More recently, a group of nearly 150 nongovernmental organizations, including AHF and MSF, wrote a letter to Gilead demanding it expand access to its patented COVID-19 treatment candidate drug remdesivir.
“Gilead holds the patent on remdesivir in 70 countries worldwide, and there are no production sites for the drug outside the U.S. In the face of a huge demand for remdesivir, MSF says Gilead is taking advantage of the patent monopoly to limit access to the drug and prevent generic competition. Meanwhile, millions of people with COVID-19 are at risk of dying due to a lack of access to effective treatments”. Gilead hurts people living with HIV.
Also, the AHF Africa Bureau, Director of Advocacy, Policy & Marketing, Kemi Gbadamosi, reiterated that greed and ruthless profiteering are a core part of Gilead’s corporate strategy.
She explained that over the past several years, Gilead has been criticized for blocking access to affordable treatment of cryptococcal meningitis – a potentially deadly fungal disease that often affects people living with HIV.
According to her, “Gilead holds a patent on the technology needed to produce the drug; therefore, generic manufacturers cannot produce it at a lower cost”.
Gilead has promised but failed to deliver on a commitment to provide the drug to 116 countries at $16 per vial and has not even registered the drug in these countries, relying instead on local suppliers in countries like India and South Africa, with the price in low- and middle-income countries ranging from $70-$200 per vial”.
“For decades, Gilead has exacted a heavy toll upon people living with HIV around the world. By securing successive patents on tenofovir-based formulations for over two decades, Gilead has generated billions of dollars in profit by maintaining a monopoly on some of the most effective and well-tolerated antiretroviral drugs”.
“In 2016, when the estimated cost of Atripla in the developing world was around $100 per patient per year, the U.S. government paid $30,000 per patient per year for the same drug”. She added.
On patent control through evergreening, she said the drastic disparity in price was a direct result of Gilead’s greed and monopolistic behavior.
“Through some minor modifications, Gilead has been able to extend the patent on Truvada, a component of Atripla, from the original expiry date of 2017 to 2026”.
“This practice is known as patent evergreening, whereby pharmaceutical companies are able to extend drug patents by making small changes to the formulations and re-patenting them as new and improved drugs, despite only making small, incremental changes that do not constitute a major innovation”.
“This keeps affordable and better drugs from reaching low- and middle-income countries around the world”.
“AHF has a long-running history of advocating and challenging Gilead on its greed and profiteering from the most vulnerable, ill people globally.
“Despite claims that it uses its enormous profits to develop new drugs, Gilead all too often buys up publicly funded research on new medicines, brings them to market at inflated prices, and rewards its executives with enormous pay packages while delivering above-market stock prices and dividends for its shareholders”.
Gbadamosi therefore said, as a leading global HIV/AIDS organization with over 1.7 million patients in care across 45 countries, it is their responsibility at AHF to take a stand and call out Gilead so that governments and decision-makers everywhere put collective pressure on it to prioritize lives over obscenely high profits.
