Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - February 9, 2007
Apiradee Treerutkuarkul
It follows the government's decision to approve a compulsory licence for the importation or production of a cheaper, generic version of two medicines - Kaletra, the second-line Aids drug, and clopidogrel, marketed as Plavix, one of the world's most common treatments for heart disease.
Representatives of Abbott Laboratories met for two hours with senior health officials yesterday.
A joint statement released after the meeting said they agreed in principle to reduce the price of Kaletra to increase its availability to HIV-positive people who have developed a resistance to first-line drugs such as GPO-VIR.
The new price of Kaletra for government use had not been finalised, said Suvit Wibulpolprasert, a senior ministry adviser on health economics.
However, he believed the price range would be lower than 4,000 baht a month per patient. The market price of the patented Aids drug is currently 11,580 baht a month.
About 8,000 HIV-positive people under the universal healthcare scheme have developed resistance to GPO-VIR, and the second-line drug is needed for treatment, Dr Suvit said.
The number of people living with HIV/Aids in need of advanced anti-retroviral therapy would be higher if those from the two healthcare schemes for civil servants and employees of private firms were included.
Compulsory licensing for an inexpensive version of Kaletra would be applied only to the three governmental healthcare schemes, he said.
It would not cover the upper market of the drug firm, for example private hospitals providing high-end health services for well-to-do local and foreign patients.
He said the drug company had told them it was also studying if it was possible to cut production costs, and therefore drug prices, by reducing some of the raw ingredients used in the development and production processes.
Disease Control Department chief Thawat Sundarachan said it would be difficult for consumers to discover if the drug company actually did so.
Paul Cawthorne, a representative of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) in Thailand, objected to the idea of increasing access to an overpriced drug by reducing the raw materials used during the production procedure.
As a marketing tactic this would be unethical and much too benefit-oriented.
Kaletra's global sales total US$1.1 billion (41.8 billion baht) annually.
The owners of Plavix, sold by Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, have also sought a meeting with the Commerce Ministry.
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