PHA-Exchange> Gilead Excludes Latin America and the Caribbean from Price Reductions for Viread

Wed Aug 4 00:26:20 PDT 2004

From: Richard Stern 
To: tinku at myself.com ; nccindia_ngp at sancharnet.in ; saathii at yahoogroups.com ; Anand Tiwari ; Birendra ; fatima2710 at hotmail.com ; gilada at usa.net ; inpplus at eth.net ; jkmaniar at vsnl.com ; lawyers ; Nidhi Khosla ; Prasanna - PHM communications ; salkalpt at vsnl.com ; schleir at HRW.ORG ; subha raghavan ; sunil ; syjoshi at vsnl.com ; Taufiqur Rahman ; viksalig at mweb.co.za ; Ashok Row ; Ashok ; chetna ; chin ; cini ; healthlink 
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 11:02 AM
Subject: Gilead Excludes Latin America and the Caribbean from Price Reductions for Viread

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4 August, 2004
For immediate release...

Gilead Excludes Latin America and the Caribbean from Price Reductions for Viread

                                                        By Eugene Schiff*

Gilead seems to be very strongly promoting their Viread (tenofavir) treatment, and advertising their commitment to "increasing access to this once daily HIV medicine for people living with HIV in developing countries though the Gilead Access Program."   The program is  available to 68 countries world wide. However, the company has  completely left out any price reductions for Latin American and Caribbean nations. 

A leaflet and the website: 
http://www.gileadaccess.org/choosecountry.cfm
mention that "because of its ease of use, Viread may be a particularly suitable option in resource limited settings," adding that "...Viread has been shown to suppress resistance to commonly prescribed anti-HIV
drugs."   Viread is taken as a single tablet once a day.  

The program claims to provide

-Sale of the drug at no profit in 68 developing countries, 
-Simplified direct purchasing, without intermediary suppliers 
-Information and guidance about access to Viread
-Clinical Research to improve HIV treatment strategies in developing countries

However, besides Haiti, NO country in Latin American or the Caribbean country is listed as eligible for this program (only Argentina is mentioned separately as a country where Viread is marketed).   All of Africa, selected countries from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands (Vauatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and others) are listed as eligible.

It seems noteworthy and puzzing that Gilead skips over this entire region, which might warrant a timely and coherent public response/statement by UNAIDS or PAHO, as PLWHA, physicians, National AIDS Program  Directors, activists and others who attended the recent  International AIDS Conference in Bangkok were inundated with marketing, press releases, and presentations of scientific studies promoting the use of tenofavir and will likely be returning with this information to their respective countries in the region. Gilead also placed its name and logo prominently across the hundreds of buses transporting delegates from the conference site to their hotels in Bangkok. 

The price for Viread through the Access  Program is $39 per month, roughly 10 percent of the U.S. wholesale price of $360 per month, according to Bob Huff of Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York.  But Latin American and Caribbean nations must still pay the $360 per month price (or more after distribution and shipping costs), an unaffordable price in most countries in the region. 

As scaling up treatment occurs throughout the region, it seems essential to avoid further confusion regarding the introduction, need or appropriateness (or not) of these second line and newer drugs options in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Unfortunately, another major problem seems to be that testing for drug resistance remains very difficult in most of the region.  Even so, one can easily foresee concerns about a black market developing and desperately impoverished patients reselling their medicines to others where high price differentials exist say, between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, or even Haiti and Miami.  It therefore seems even more essential now that UNAIDS plays a leading role in responding to gaps in the "Gilead Access Program" and in establishing better guidelines and standards for pricing and distributing drug and diagnostics, generic and original, in order to ensure access to high quality health care and treatment for people living with AIDS in the Latin America and the Caribbean.

*Asociacion Agua Buena
San José, Costa Rica
Eugene Schiff
iecs96i at aol.com
*******************************************************
Richard Stern, Director
Tel/Fax: 506-234-2411
rastern at racsa.co.cr
Guillermo Murillo
Assistant Director
Tel/Fax:  506-433-8522
memopvs at racsa.co.cr   
www.aguabuena.org

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