Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal - June 11, 2001
Rachel Zimmerman
Jean-Pierre Garnier, Glaxo's chief executive, said the list price of three AIDS drugs -- Ziagen, Trizivir and Agenerase -- will be reduced to sell at cost in 63 of the world's poorest countries, including sub-Saharan Africa, where the AIDS epidemic has hit hardest.
Specifically, officials said the price of Ziagen, which sells for $10.68 a day in the U.S. for the standard two-pill treatment, will drop to $3.80 a day; Trizivir, a potent, triple-drug combination pill taken twice a day at a cost of $27.92 in the U.S. will sell for $6.60 in poor countries; and Agenerase, a protease inhibitor that costs $18.50 a day for 16 pills in the U.S., will be sold for $8.70 a day under the new preferential pricing plan. In addition to the AIDS drugs, the company says it will reduce the price of its malarial pill Malarone, from the U.S. list price of $52.71 for a full course of 12 tablets to $19.20 in the developing world.
But even at those discounts, Mr. Garnier concedes the prices will remain out of reach for most patients in the developing world. "We're not naive about the fact that compared to the means in these countries, everything is overpriced, even the generics," Mr. Garnier said in an interview from Paris. He expects that international purchasing funds, such as the new global AIDS and health fund recently announced by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, might subsidize the costs of the medicines for poor nations.
In addition to the new price cuts, Glaxo says it will continue to offer the preferential price of $2 a day for its combination therapy Combivir to governments, charity groups and nongovernmental organizations in the least-developed countries. And Glaxo says it is negotiating discounts on AIDS drugs with several large private employers in Africa.
The company also said it would create a new corporate social-responsibility committee, chaired by Sir Richard Sykes, nonexecutive chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, to assess the company's policies in the developing world. And Glaxo plans to launch a series of pilot projects to determine the impact of preferentially priced anti-infectives, deworming and diarrheal medicines.
Since drug makers, under international pressure, began announcing price cuts for AIDS medicines one year ago, a total of 10 countries have signed agreements for the discounts, including Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Mali, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda, according to Unaids, the United Nations agency overseeing the access program.
But even with such deals, medicines have been slow to get to patients. "We're not surprised," Mr. Garnier said. "You can't simply use those drugs in an open environment because there are a whole lot of practical issues to overcome," from establishing distribution channels to ensuring compliance with a complex medical regimen. "But the ball is more in their camp than ours."
Write to Rachel Zimmerman at rachel.zimmerman@wsj.com
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