[Ip-health] Abbott cuts price Brazil pays for AIDS drug

[Michelle Childs]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Abbott cuts price Brazil pays for AIDS drug

Last Updated: 2007-07-04 15:00:33 -0400 (Reuters Health)

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Abbott Laboratories Inc. said on Wednesday it
will cut the price it charges Brazil for its Kaletra AIDS drug by
29.5 percent as part of a strategy to lower costs for developing
nations.

The lower price for Kaletra, a combination of the drugs lopinavir and
ritonavir, will help Brazil supply free drugs for its globally
recognized AIDS treatment program.

"This accord saves Brazil's program more than $10 million a year and
creates a reserve for more patients with HIV," Abbott Vice President
for Latin America Heather Mason said at a press conference in Brasilia.

In May, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva authorized Brazil to
break the patent on an AIDS drug for the first time after price talks
broke down with Merck & Co. <MRK.N. Brazil now imports a cheaper
generic version of efavirenz, Merck's Stocrin, from India.

"The difference between the two cases was that Abbott sought an
understanding with the Brazilian government," said Health Minister
Jose Temporao, seated next to Abbott executives.

Under WTO rules, countries can issue a "compulsory license" to
manufacture or buy generic versions of patented drugs deemed critical
to public health.

Drug makers often cut prices to keep developing countries as clients
and avoid compulsory licenses.

"It would be very promising if Abbott's example were to be followed
by other laboratories," Temporao said.

Brazil has provided free universal access to AIDS drugs, condoms and
syringes for two decades as part of a prevention program lauded by
the United Nations.

The program helped Brazil slow infection rates and avoid what experts
said could become an AIDS epidemic. Infection rates among adults have
stabilized at levels similar to those in the United States.

But government spending on anti-retroviral drugs doubled in four
years to nearly 1 billion reais (US$495 million) in 2005, according
to a Brazilian report for the United Nations.

Temporao, a fiery new health minister who took office in March, has
been outspoken in his criticism of high-priced drugs. He has also
slashed prices on birth control pills, told men to get more
vasectomies and angered Roman Catholic leaders by calling for a
referendum on whether Brazil should legalize abortion.

On Wednesday he said price talks were ongoing with many
pharmaceutical companies and that Brazil would like to produce more
drugs domestically.

Abbott cut the price for Kaletra tablets, which currently have no
generic equivalent, from a previously agreed $1.04 per pill to 73
cents per pill this year and 63 cents in 2008.

Mason said the move was part of a strategy to cut prices for the
tablets, which do not require refrigeration, for some four dozen
middle-to-lower-income developing nations.

"It's a win-win situation," she said.

Brazil will start offering Kaletra tablets to some 32,000 patients in
September, phasing out the use of capsules.


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Michelle Childs
Head of European Affairs
Knowledge Ecology International
michelle.childs@keionline.org