[Ip-health] New York Times: Clinton Helps Broker Deal for Medicine to Treat AIDS

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

December 1, 2006

Clinton Helps Broker Deal for Medicine to Treat AIDS

By CELIA W. DUGGER

With the financial backing of a group of nations led by France, former
President Bill Clinton announced Thursday that his foundation had
negotiated deeply reduced prices for 19 AIDS drugs to treat children,
halving the cost of the simplest-to-use therapy =97 three drugs combined
in a single pill =97 to less than $60 a year for each boy and girl.

The countries, France, Brazil, Britain, Norway and Chile, are putting
up $35 million to buy antiretroviral drugs and diagnostic tests to
treat 100,000 more children in 40 nations next year. Most of the money
was raised through taxes on airline tickets, a dedicated revenue source
suited to ensuring the lifelong treatment of children with AIDS.

The Clinton Foundation, which has established a record of lowering AIDS
drug prices in recent years, negotiated on the countries=92 behalf, using
their pooled purchasing power to get volume discounts on the drugs.

The countries formed a new Geneva-based organization called Unitaid
earlier this year to buy AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria drugs.

Only about 80,000 of the 660,000 children with AIDS who need treatment
now get it, the United Nations AIDS agency estimates, and half the
children who do not get the drugs die by the time they turn 2 years
old. The United Nations Children=92s Fund, or Unicef, has described
children as the invisible face of the AIDS pandemic because they are so
much less likely than adults to get life-saving medicines.

=93Providing drugs of this quality at these prices makes it even easier
to scale up treatment,=94 said Peter McDermott, who runs Unicef=92s AIDS
program. =93Unicef is extremely excited by this.=94

In addition to the Unitaid money to buy the drugs, the Clinton
Foundation has raised $15 million to train doctors, upgrade pediatric
wards and provide other assistance that the countries in Africa, Asia,
Latin America and the Caribbean will need to treat the additional
100,000 children next year.

Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories, Indian generic drug manufacturers, will
be providing pills that combine three antiretroviral drugs into a
single tablet, a formulation that is easier to transport, store and use
than multiple pills and syrups. The combination tablets also need no
refrigeration, an important advantage in poor countries lacking
electricity, and can be dissolved in water for babies and infants too
young to swallow pills.

Sandeep Juneja, the H.I.V. project head for Ranbaxy, said in a
telephone interview that the company was able to provide the lower
prices because of the larger volume of sales and because the Clinton
Foundation, buying on Unitaid=92s behalf, would consolidate many small
purchases. He explained that the market for pediatric AIDS drugs was
relatively small, fragmented and spread thinly across many countries.

=93It would be a nightmare handling those small orders,=94 he said.
=93Imagine 40 to 60 countries buying a few hundred bottles individually,
with no way to predict how many bottles would be needed.=94

The new prices for 19 pediatric AIDS drugs are on average 45 percent
less than the lowest rates offered to poor countries in Doctors Without
Borders=92 listing of AIDS drug prices, and were more than 60 percent
lower than the prices the World Health Organization reported were
actually paid by developing countries, the foundation said.

Mr. Clinton announced the price reductions yesterday at a children=92s
hospital in New Delhi with Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress
Party, which is the chief member of India=92s coalition government. India
is among the nation=92s benefiting from Unitaid=92s contributions.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
CPTech
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@cptech.org