BRASILIA, Aug 23 (AFP) - Brazil will begin producing a generic version of the anti-AIDS drug Nelfinavir, which is patented by the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Roche, Health Minister Jose Serra confirmed Thursday.
The medicine will be manufactured starting in early 2002 at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, or FioCruz, in Rio de Janeiro, Serra said.
On Wednesday, the health minister announced that Brazil had halted negotiations with Roche and would cease respecting its patent on Nelfinavir because the company refused to sufficiently lower the "abusive" price of the drug.
Nelfinavir is one of 12 anti-AIDS drugs that the Brazilian government distributes for free to people who have contracted AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
It is used by some 22,000 Brazilians in the program, at an annual cost of 88 million dollars, about 28 percent of the program's total cost. Producing a generic version will cut the cost of the drug in half, the ministry said.
"We are surprised to hear the news," Roche spokesman Daniel Piller said, adding that the Brazilian authorities had not officially informed the company of the decision.
He added that Ernest Egil, who heads Roche's subsidiary in Brazil, was "very disappointed" at the Brazilian decision.
Piller said that Roche was still in negotiations with Brazil over a price cut for the drug and that a discount proposed by the company was "very close to the Brazilian government expectation."
"We go on with the discussions, and we are confident to find a solution," he said, adding that the price being proposed by Roche was half its cost in the United States.
But according to Serra, Brazil was "on hold" with Roche since April and had begun in the meantime looking into how the drug was made.
Roche agreed to lower the price by 13 percent, an offer viewed as insufficient by Brasilia, the ministry said.
In April, US drug maker Merck Sharp and Dohme agreed to cut the price of Indivanir (Crixivan) and Efavirenz (Stocrin) by 64.66 percent and 59.02 percent, respectively, saving the Brazilian government about 41.5 million dollars a year.
Brazilian patent law allows authorities to license a local company to manufacture a product patented by a foreign company if the foreign firm fails to produce it in the country within three years of getting the patent.
Brazil currently produces seven of the 12 anti-AIDS drugs and provides them to 95,000 Brazilians for free, a strategy which has cut the AIDS-related mortality rate in the giant South American nation by 40 percent since 1997, when the program was implemented.
Brasilia spends some 300 million dollars on the program each year.
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