Hyderabad: AIDS Health Foundation (ADF) India has launched a campaign against large biopharmaceutical firms like Gilead to stop overpricing of life-saving drugs and put people before profits. Gilead Sciences Inc. is among the top 15 biopharmaceutical firms in the world, generating over $27 billion in revenue.
“In addition to overpricing lifesaving drugs, it has refused to register some medications in lower-income countries and consistently blocks attempts to introduce cheaper, generic versions of its medicines,” said Dr V. Sam Prasad, country programme director, ADF India.
The organisation is working towards raising awareness about Gilead’s practices and calling on them to stop “ever-greening” patents.
Dr Prasad said, “These companies smartly obtain additional patents on the original drug's modifications, such as new dosages, new forms, new releases, or new combinations, on existing HIV/AIDS drugs like Truvada – this is exploitation, not innovation.”
They are also pressuring the company to open the license for the generic production of the lifesaving drug for Hepatitis C - Harvoni - to all low and middle-income countries and license transfer of technology to produce the drug for cryptococcal meningitis to generic manufacturers, across the globe.
"Gilead’s tactics have hurt people living with HIV worldwide for over 20 years by securing successive patents, known as ‘ever-greening,’ and generating billions of dollars by creating a monopoly on some of the most effective and well-tolerated antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV. It has excluded 50 middle-income countries from access to the generic, discounted price," he said.
A group of nearly 150 NGOs, including AHF, has recently written to Gilead demanding that it expand access to its patented Covid-19 treatment candidate drug Remdesivir.
Despite claims that it uses its enormous profits to develop new drugs, Gilead all too often buys up publicly funded research on new medicines and brings them to market at inflated prices, he said.
