Following public requests by at least three medical and HIV/AIDS groups to dramatically lower the price charged to South African groups for a drug to fight cryptococcal meningitis -- a lethal brain disease found in a number of AIDS patients -- Pfizer Inc. has announced it will donate the product, Diflucan, to the South African government, the Village Voice reports.
The surprise announcement came after a month of well-publicized requests by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), ACT UP, and the South African-based Treatment Action Campaign, asking the pharmaceutical giant to lower the cost of its fluconazole anti-fungal drug by at least 90 percent, to match the price of a generic drug manufactured and sold in Thailand, the Voice reports.
A generic dose of the drug costs about 70 cents in Thailand, while Pfizer charges about $7.50 a dose in South Africa, the newspaper reports.
These efforts are focused in South Africa because an estimated 10 percent of the country's population have HIV/AIDS, and because the government passed laws in 1997 that allowed patented drugs to be manufactured there as generic products, and allowed the import of such generic drugs from other nations.
Pfizer officials said they decided to donate the drug rather than reduce its price because they can model the program after their Zithromax antibiotic program, which gives the drug to third-world countries fighting river blindness.
South African health officials said they were pleased with the announcement, but wanted other details, such as whether the donation program has an expiration date. If so, this would put the country's anti-HIV/AIDS efforts back to where they are now, the Voice reports.
Bernard Pecoul, M.D., director of Doctors Without Borders' Access to Essential Medicines Campaign, likewise applauded Pfizer's efforts, but noted that "drug donations are not a global and sustainable solution to the AIDS pandemic."
Pecoul and other health officials have asked drug manufacturers worldwide to develop tiered pricing programs in developing nations, or to allow these countries to license generic products.
Full text of the article is currently found at:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0014/schoofs2.shtml
