Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - August 26, 2006
Apiradee Treerutkuarkul
The Food and Drug Administration licensed the drug last week to allow it to be sold on the local market.
A patient taking Gilead's Tenofovir currently has to pay around 19,000 baht per month, while a patient taking GPO-VIR, the local generic version of an anti-Aids drug, pays only 1,200 baht a month.
But with the reduced price, patients would have to pay only 2,000-5,000 baht a month for Tenofovir and other drugs which were needed in the treatment course, he said.
At present, people living with HIV/Aids depend mainly on GPO-VIR. The Government Pharmaceutical Organisation has distributed the drug free of charge to about 50,000 HIV-positive people.
However, about 5,000 HIV-positive people taking GPO-VIR have become resistant to the drug, so they have to switch to Efavirenz and Kaletra, which cost up to 24,000 baht per month.
Dr Praphan claimed that Tenofovir could help those having problems with drug resistance. Patients could experience nausea as a side-effect during the first period of use. However, most appear to have tolerated the drug well, according to an initial study carried out on 600 HIV-positive people in the country.
Nimit Thien-udom, director of the Aids Access Foundation, said the price reduction was good news for people living with HIV/Aids.
However, the price was still too high, particularly for poor patients to be able to afford the drug, he said.
There are about 800,000 HIV-infected people in Thailand, and around 200,000-300,000 are in serious condition and needed to be treated with anti-retroviral drugs.
But it is estimated that only 10% of this group can afford the drugs through the National Health Security Office (NHSO)'s 30-baht universal healthcare scheme.
Tenofovir had not yet been included on the NHSO's list of anti-retroviral drugs available under the scheme, he said.
"A better way to help people living with HIV/Aids is for the pharmaceutical companies to allow developing countries to produce a generic version of anti-retroviral drugs, so people living with HIV/Aids will have more opportunities to have access to proper treatment," he said.
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