nterview with MSF pharmacist Janice Lee
© MSF
Janice Lee is a pharmacist for MSF.
Janice Lee is a pharmacist who worked with medical teams in Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) projects inLiberia and Zimbabwe before starting work with MSF’s Access Campaign. Her job is, among many other things, to identify potential new sources of drugs that could be of use to MSF’s work treating patients in developing countries. She also works closely with both originator and generic drug companies to feedback on the medical needs that MSF sees in its work in the field. Here, she talks about why generic medicines are so important to our medical teams working in some of the poorest places on earth.
You worked as a pharmacist in Liberia and Zimbabwe, dealing with the drugs for our projects, how dependent are MSF medical teams on generic drugs from India to carry out their work ?
Our reliance on Indian generic drugs for treating patients with HIV/AIDS across all our programmes in MSF is particularly acute
—around 80 percent of the AIDS medicines we use are generic drugs made by Indian companies. But it’s not just AIDS. In other projects too, we also routinely use Indian generic drugs to treat other diseases, such as TB, malaria, and a wide range of infectious diseases.
And it’s not just MSF that relies on the flow of generic drugs; all the major donors and leading international treatment providers, like the Global Fund, PEPFAR, UNITAID, and UNICEF, are all rely on quality affordable generic drugs for the programs they support. Right now, at a time when
funding for global health programs is shrinking, it’s more important than ever to keep the flow of these affordable drugs going.
Why are so many of these generic medicines made by companies in India ?
There are several reasons. Most importantly, many of the AIDS drugs we use right now to treat people with HIV are patented in many countries. But international trade rules required India to start granting patents on pharmaceutical products only after 2005. Until that time, Indian companies were able to manufacture generic versions that competed in price not only with brand name companies but also amongst themselves to bring down the prices of AIDS drugs drastically. This is what allowed the price of treatment to drop from over US$10,000 ten years ago to less than US$80 today.
What’s more, it has been possible for them to create fixed-dose combination pills of these generic antiretrovirals
—essentially two or three pills in one
—that have been hugely influential in simplifying AIDS treatment and making treatment more practical in developing countries where we work. Imagine, we can offer a patient one pill once a day rather than a handful to be taken at different times of day. Some of these fixed-dose combinations don’t even exist in rich countries precisely because of the patent barriers that exist there.
In 2005, India put in place a patent law
—fortunately it’s a law that supports public health objectives, so the result has been that India's generic manufacturers have had some space to continue producing affordable and effective medicines. But the problem ahead of us is that many of the newer AIDS drugs are now patented in India and so cannot be produced by the generic manufacturers, so they will remain out of reach.
How will the current trade talks between the European Union and India make this situation worse ?
The trade talks could be another tightening of the screw. One of the main provisions that Europe wants to include in the trade deal is data exclusivity, which means more affordable generic medicines can’t be registered on the basis of data for safety and efficacy that is already out there, the generic companies will have to run their own clinical trials. If India accepts this then two options open up: generic companies will either have to wait longer (anywhere from five to ten years) before they can market their own versions of an expensive originator drug. This means it will be longer before patients can benefit from the development of an affordable generic version of the medicine. Or, in order to register their medicines, the companies will have to conduct their own clinical trials on their products, which is not only unnecessary but will also be very expensive, time-consuming and unethical. Data exclusivity won’t affect drugs that are already registered and on the market in India but would impact on the promising newest antiretroviral drugs coming along in the drug pipeline that could be our new essential treatment for AIDS patients. And what’s particularly dangerous is that it applies even where drugs are not under patent, so it acts like an alternative patent that blocks generic production.
So how much more expensive could AIDS treatment be for patients if we had to use branded or originator drugs rather than generic drugs ?
We know in the lowest income countries, a year’s treatment using the latest recommended World Health Organization recommendations containing tenofovir from an originator company costs US$613. And in some middle-income countries that price rises to over US$1000. Compare that to the price of the generic version of US$176 in a fixed dose combination pill and you can see why generics are so important, allowing us to treat many more people.
Patients who have been on antiretroviral treatment for some time develop resistance to their treatment and may have to move to newer AIDS treatments. How do branded drugs compare in price to generic drugs in that case ?
For what is called a second-line treatment, the cost of a year’s treatment using a generic combination of second-line antiretrovirals (containing boosted atazanavir) would be US$465. A branded product can cost two to three hundred dollars more.
And once a patient develops resistance to that second set of drugs, there are really no affordable options since the generic production of the newest AIDS drugs has already been stopped in India because the drugs are patented. The lowest branded product can cost over US$3,200 for a year’s treatment, which is completely out of reach for most people in developing countries.
Do generic medicines also make the treatment of children with AIDS more affordable ?
It’s a different story for children because the originator companies don’t see any commercial gain in developing and marketing fixed-dose combination treatments for children. This is essentially because in their main markets, rich countries, pediatric AIDS has almost been wiped out. So most AIDS medicine formulations for children only come from generic manufacturers in the first place. Currently the most commonly used generic fixed-dose combination for treatment of HIV/AIDS in children costs US$55 to treat a child for one year.
We also need to expand the range of options for treatment of children with HIV/AIDS and ensure that they are developed with the needs of developing countries in mind both in terms of research and development but also the formulation. For instance, most of our patients do not have a refrigerator and some remote places where we work don’t have a power supply, so drugs cannot be refrigerated. Formulations adapted for use in developing world are more likely to be developed by generic manufacturers than the big name pharmaceutical companies based in Europe and the United States.
You’ve been working for MSF in AIDS programs alongside the medical teams, what would it mean if we couldn’t get our hands on these generic drugs any more ?
Patients would die! And we would go back ten years to where we started, when treatment was too expensive to give to patients and all we could do was basically just treating the opportunistic infections that accompany HIV infection without being able to suppress the virus at all. When you remember that there is already a funding crisis today that threatens countries’ ability to put more patients on treatment, then having medicines become more expensive in the future is a very a frightening prospect.
Why India's Generic Medicines Industry is So Important | MSF USA
A lifeline to treatment: the role of Indian generic manufacturers in supplying antiretroviral medicines to developing countries
Brenda Waning,
1,2
Ellen Diedrichsen,1 and
Suerie Moon3
Author information ► Article notes ► Copyright and License information ►
This article has been
cited by other articles in PMC.
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Abstract
Background
Indian manufacturers of generic antiretroviral (ARV) medicines facilitated the rapid scale up of HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries though provision of low-priced, quality-assured medicines. The legal framework in India that facilitated such production, however, is changing with implementation of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, and intellectual property measures being discussed in regional and bilateral free trade agreement negotiations. Reliable quantitative estimates of the Indian role in generic global ARV supply are needed to understand potential impacts of such measures on HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries.
Methods
We utilized transactional data containing 17,646 donor-funded purchases of ARV tablets made by 115 low- and middle-income countries from 2003 to 2008 to measure market share, purchase trends and prices of Indian-produced generic ARVs compared with those of non-Indian generic and brand ARVs.
Results
Indian generic manufacturers dominate the ARV market, accounting for more than 80% of annual purchase volumes. Among paediatric ARV and adult nucleoside and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor markets, Indian-produced generics accounted for 91% and 89% of 2008 global purchase volumes, respectively. From 2003 to 2008, the number of Indian generic manufactures supplying ARVs increased from four to 10 while the number of Indian-manufactured generic products increased from 14 to 53. Ninety-six of 100 countries purchased Indian generic ARVs in 2008, including high HIV-burden sub-Saharan African countries. Indian-produced generic ARVs used in first-line regimens were consistently and considerably less expensive than non-Indian generic and innovator ARVs. Key ARVs newly recommended by the World Health Organization are three to four times more expensive than older regimens.
Conclusions
Indian generic producers supply the majority of ARVs in developing countries. Future scale up using newly recommended ARVs will likely be hampered until Indian generic producers can provide the dramatic price reductions and improved formulations observed in the past. Rather than agreeing to inappropriate intellectual property obligations through free trade agreements, India and its trade partners - plus international organizations, donors, civil society and pharmaceutical manufacturers - should ensure that there is sufficient policy space for Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers to continue their central role in supplying developing countries with low-priced, quality-assured generic medicines.
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Background
India has emerged as a world leader in generic pharmaceuticals production, supplying 20% of the global market for generic medicines [
1]. The emergence of generic sources supplying quality antiretroviral (ARV) medicines at prices much lower than originator prices undoubtedly accelerated the global scale up of HIV/AIDS treatment. From 2002 to 2008, more than 4 million people were started on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in developing countries [
2].
To date, the vast majority of people in low- and middle-income countries have been treated with generic ARVs produced by Indian manufacturers unhampered by patent and other intellectual property restrictions [
3]. This absence of intellectual property barriers also resulted in the development of improved ARV formulations, such as paediatric dosage forms and fixed-dose combination (FDC) ARVs whereby two or more ARVs are combined into one tablet. As of the end of 2009, the United States Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization (WHO) Prequalification Programme approved or pre-qualified 57 adult FDCs and 31 paediatric ARV tablets produced by Indian generic manufacturers but only eight adult FDCs and 14 paediatric ARV tablets produced by non-Indian and originator manufacturers [
4-
6].
The intellectual property framework that positioned India as the "pharmacy of the developing world", however, is rapidly changing. In 2005, India was obliged to amend its patent law to allow product patents on medicines to comply with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The introduction of product patents in India is severely constraining generic competition and supply, particularly for newer medicines. Now, there is a threat that the limited policy space that remains will be further constricted by bilateral or regional free trade agreements. Unfortunately, many free trade agreements that have been concluded or are being negotiated between industrialized and developing countries contain measures that restrict access to medicines [
7].
Agreements involving India are of particular concern because of the country's role as a worldwide supplier of low-priced generic medicines. For example, current free trade agreement negotiations between the European Union and India [
8,
9] include measures that delay or restrict competition from generic medicines, including: patent term extensions beyond the 20 years required by TRIPS; data exclusivity (that could delay the registration of generic medicines); and border enforcement measures that could block international trade in generic medicines when they are suspected of infringing patents in the countries through which they transit. These types of border measures blocked medicines from reaching patients in Africa and Latin America in 2008 and 2009 when European customs authorities seized Indian-produced generics transiting via Amsterdam airport on suspicion that they infringed Dutch patents [
10]. All of these measures can delay or restrict competition from generic medicines and are in direct conflict with the 2001 WTO Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health, and medical ethics [
8,
9].
A better understanding of the role that Indian generic medicines producers play in HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries will shed light on the potential consequences of recently proposed intellectual property measures for global public health. While their relative importance is widely recognized, reliable quantitative estimates of generic ARVs supplied by Indian producers are not available. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the extent to which Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers have contributed to HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries to better understand the potential implications of current and future policies that may hamper or restrict market entry of generic ARV manufacturers and generic competition.
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Methods
We obtained donor-funded ARV purchase transactions over the 2003-2008 period from the WHO Global Price Reporting Mechanism, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria's Price & Quality Reporting Tool, and UNITAID as provided by the Clinton Health Access Initiative [
11-
14]. Antiretroviral transactional data was systematically cleaned and validated using a market intelligence database described elsewhere [
15-
17]. We excluded transactions for liquid ARV formulations, which resulted in an analytic data set containing 17,646 donor-funded purchases of ARV tablets and capsules made by 115 countries (Figure
(Figure11).
Figure 1
Description of analytic data set.
Market share by volume is calculated in person-years for Indian generic, non-Indian generic and brand ARVs using WHO-recommended adult doses for persons weighing more than 60 kilogrammes (kg) [
18,
19]. We provided estimates of producer market share for all ARVs, but also calculated market share among three ARV market niches: paediatric ARVs (all classes), adult nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), and adult protease inhibitors (PIs).
We compared purchase trends for Indian generic, non-Indian generic and brand ARVs, summarizing the number of manufacturers, products/dosage forms, purchases, purchasing countries and value (in US dollars).
We calculated 2008 antiretroviral regimen prices for the most commonly used first-line regimens recommended by the WHO in its 2003 and 2006 treatment guidelines for adults weighing more than 60 kg [
18,
19]. We expressed regimen prices as price per person per year. Because most ARV price distributions were skewed dramatically by a few high price outliers, we presented regimen prices using median and quartile prices to accurately convey central tendencies. We differentiate regimen composition by using a "+" when multiple tablets are used to create a regimen (e.g., 3TC+NVP+TDF) and a "/" for FDC formulations (e.g., 3TC/NVP/d4T). We plotted 2003-2008 trends in generic ARV regimen prices along with those of innovator ARV regimens offered through differential or tiered prices, as reported to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in its "Untangling the web of ARV price reductions" [
20]. We obtained all ARV prices in United States dollars and adjusted them to the January-December 2008 period using the annual US Consumer Price Index [
21].
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Results
Our results confirm the prominence of Indian generic manufacturers in the supply of antiretroviral medicines to developing countries. Since 2006, Indian-produced generic ARVs have accounted for more than 80% of the donor-funded developing country market, and comprised 87% of ARV purchase volumes in 2008 (Figure
(Figure22).
Figure 2
Overall ARV market share (volume) for Indian generic, non-Indian generic and originator (brand) manufacturers, 2003-2008.
The proportion of ARVs produced by Indian manufacturers is even higher within certain market niches. In 2008, Indian-produced generics accounted for 91% of paediatric ARV volume and 89% of adult NRTI and NNRTI purchases (Figure
(Figure3).3). In contrast, originator companies accounted for the majority (81%) of purchase volumes for adult protease inhibitors (PIs), with Indian generics accounting for only 19%.
Figure 3
Adult and paediatric ARV market share (volume) for Indian generic, non-Indian generic and originator (brand) manufacturers, 2008.
The value of the donor-funded, developing country ARV market has exhibited dramatic annual growth over the past several years. By 2008, Indian generic ARVs accounted for 65% of the total value (US$463 million) of ARV purchases reported, while non-Indian generic and innovator ARVs accounted for 13% and 22% of market value, respectively (Table
(Table1).1). The number of Indian generic manufacturers supplying ARVs to low- and middle-income countries increased from four to 10 from 2003 to 2008, while the number of Indian-produced generic ARV products increased from 14 to 53 over the same period (Table
(Table11).
Table 1
Purchase trends for Indian generic, non-Indian generic and originator ARVs, 2003-2008
In 2008, 96 of 100 countries reported ARV purchases from Indian generic producers, while only 29 countries reported purchases from non-Indian generic manufacturers (Table
(Table1,1, Figure
Figure4).4). Most countries reported purchases of innovator PIs whereas far fewer countries reported generic PI purchases, most likely due to lower prices offered through tiered pricing schemes for brand lopinavir/ritonavir in 2003-2008. The number of countries purchasing Indian-produced generic PIs, however, has steadily increased over the years as global PI volumes have increased and generic pricing has become more competitive with originator tiered prices.
Figure 4
Countries reporting purchases of Indian generic ARVs in 2008.
Analysis of Indian-produced generic ARV purchase trends by country reveal India's own reliance on the availability of generic ARVs as demonstrated by nearly 2200 purchases of Indian-produced generic ARVs (Table
(Table2)2) totalling nearly US$26 million in 2008. Volumes associated with these purchases were sufficient to treat more than 200,000 people with first-line regimens and more than 1000 people with second-line regimens. India reported no purchases for non-Indian generic or innovator ARVs in 2008. Sub-Saharan African countries with high HIV/AIDS disease burdens comprise the remaining top 10 purchasers of Indian-produced generic ARVs (Table
(Table22).
Table 2
Summary of Indian-produced generic ARVs for countries with highest 2008 purchase volumes
Robust competition among manufacturers has contributed to substantial price reductions for generic ARVs over the past several years. The most commonly used first-line adult regimen (lamivudine/nevirapine/stavudine30) dropped from $414 per person per year in 2003 to $74 per person per year in 2008 for Indian-produced generics (Figure
(Figure5).5). While regimen prices for non-Indian generic were similar to Indian generic ARVs from 2004 to 2006, by 2008 the non-Indian generic price was two times higher than the Indian generic price. Innovator prices for this first-line regimen, both actual prices contained in our database and survey prices reported to MSF [
20], were consistently much higher than generic ARVs across all years. In 2008, innovator regimen prices reported to MSF were 4.5 and 7.7 times higher than Indian generic prices, depending upon the tiered-price category of the purchasing country (Figure
(Figure5)5) [
20].
Figure 5
Price trends for generic 3TC/NVP/d4T30 (fixed-dose combination) and innovator 3TC+NVP+d4T30 (3 individual tablets), 2003-2008. *Survey prices provided by innovator companies under tiered-pricing [
20]. **2003 price is for three individual ARVs (1st FDC
...
Among many concerns around the future of global ART scale up are higher prices for new WHO-recommended, first-line regimens that utilize zidovudine or tenofovir in place of stavudine [
19,
22]. As of 2008, the Indian generic global median price for newly recommended tenofovir-based regimens ranged from $246 to $309 per person per year, notably 3.3 to four times higher than the price of the most commonly used older regimen (3TC/NVP/d4T30) (Table
(Table3).3). Identical regimens, comprised of non-Indian generic and innovator ARVs, are considerably more expensive than the Indian generic versions.
Table 3
First-line ARV regimen prices comparisons, 2008
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Discussion
These analyses quantify and confirm the exceptional role that India has played in providing quality ARVs at low prices to people with HIV/AIDS in developing countries. More than 80% of all donor-funded ARVs purchased since 2006 were supplied by Indian generic manufacturers. Price reductions noted for commonly used historical first-line regimens were a result of robust generic competition among Indian manufacturers in an environment largely void of intellectual property barriers [
23,
24]. Countries across sub-Saharan Africa with high HIV/AIDS burdens, as well as India, are heavily reliant on the availability of Indian-produced generic ARVs to support their national treatment programmes.
Trade-related and intellectual property-related threats to the supply of generic medicines from India are coming at a time when the prospects of ART scale up are already cloudy. New WHO guidelines recommending early initiation of ART [
22] will result in increased numbers of people in need of treatment. At the same time, countries are trying to adopt the new ARV regimens recently recommended by WHO [
19,
25]. These newer ARVs offer better side-effect and tolerability profiles, but some of the key ARVs are more widely patented and are much more expensive than regimens used in the past. These WHO changes are welcome and help eliminate historical inequities whereby people in resource-poor countries receive a different standard of care than those in rich countries. However, country budgets within the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria have been cut [
26], while pledges and contributions appear flat, raising concerns that funds will not be available in-country to adopt the new WHO recommendations [
19,
22,
25].
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Limitations
Our study captures only donor-funded purchases and not those made by government-funded HIV/AIDS treatment programmes through such countries as Brazil, South Africa and Thailand. Similarly, we had no access to comprehensive and reliable data on patents and other intellectual property barriers and were, therefore, unable to quantitatively examine these issues in our study. While we systematically cleaned and validated all transactional data, we cannot be confident that we have identified all reporting errors in publicly available data. Prices are inconsistently reported to the Global Fund and the WHO Global Price Reporting Mechanism. Whereas some organizations, such as UNITAID and the Supply Chain Management System arm of the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, provide prices for drug costs only, Global Fund-supported countries often report prices that include not only drug costs, but also add-on costs, such as transport, insurance and taxes.
We attribute ARV price reduction primarily to generic competition, but we note that these price decreases were also spurred through the efforts of HIV/AIDS activists, civil society organizations, national governments, foundations and other international organizations.
Despite these limitations, our research provides valuable quantitative information demonstrating the critical role that Indian generic pharmaceutical manufacturers play in the global treatment of HIV/AIDS in developing countries. These results can and should be used in ongoing and future discussions around intellectual property and access to medicines.
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Conclusions
Free trade agreements that may create new intellectual property obligations for India can increase ARV prices, impede the development of acceptable dosage forms, and delay access to newer and better ARVs. Such measures can undermine the international goal to achieve universal access to HIV/AIDS interventions and the 2001 WTO Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health [
25]. Rather than agreeing to inappropriate intellectual property obligations, India and its trade partners - along with international organizations, donors, national governments, civil society and pharmaceutical manufacturers - should ensure that there is sufficient policy space for the Indian generic industry to continue its central role in supplying developing countries with low-cost, quality-assured generic medicines.
A lifeline to treatment: the role of Indian generic manufacturers in supplying antiretroviral medicines to developing countries
)....the country's action which benefits most of the poor in the world!!
