Cipla's achievements
The Cipla Revolution in HIV/AIDS - 2001
The world came to know of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. The disease spread like wildfire. The medicines made by the multinational companies were exorbitantly priced. Millions of people could not afford the cost of the medicine and died. The medicine cost between $10000 to 15000 per person annually.
Cipla shook the world by offering Triomune, a cocktail of three antiretroviral drugs in a single tablet to be taken twice a day, at a cost of less than a dollar a day. For millions of patients, this must have seemed like nothing less than divine intervention.
Dr Y K Hamied with his characteristic calm rationality, put the issues of access and cost in the right context when he said, “We are being humanitarian. But we are not doing charity. We are not making money, but we are not going to lose money either.” Every company making HIV drugs subsequently dropped its prices.
And the world finally woke up to the issue of access to medicine as a fundamental human right.
Today, more than 50% of the antiretroviral drugs keeping HIV-positive patients alive around the world are from India.
HIV/AIDS is just one example of Cipla’s humanitarian response to health crises. Another is when bird flu threatened to become a pandemic in 2005. The multinational which manufactured oseltamivir, the drug required to counter the disease, could not manufacture enough to meet the demand, but Cipla brought out the drug within three months.
World’s first anti-AIDS triple drug cocktail in a single tablet (Triomune)
World’s first oral iron chelator for thalassaemia (Kelfer)
India’s leading manufacturer of respiratory products, with the world’s widest range of inhaled drugs, devices and dosage forms, and the world’s 3rd largest manufacturer of pMDIs
World’s first combination of 2 long-acting bronchodilator inhaled drugs for COPD (Duova)
World’s first combination of inhaled corticosteroid and long-acting bronchodilator in a breath-actuated device (Foracort Autohaler)
Worlds first small volume anti-static transparent spacer device for asthma and COPD (Zerostat-VT Spacer)
Apart from pharmaceuticals for human diseases, Cipla is also India's largest veterinary pharmaceutical exporter, and the first-ever Indian company to supply animal health products to many export markets.
The Second Cipla Revolution, in Cancer - 2012
Cipla again becomes the talk of the world
Cipla rocked the world again by slashing the prices of six cancer drugs by up to 76%. Dr Y K Hamied has been campaigning passionately for the Indian government to allow use of the Compulsory Licensing facility permitted under WTO rules. This allows companies to make some of the existing life-saving drugs to sell in countries where the originator’s prices are exorbitant.
In March 2012, the government granted such a license to an Indian company, Natco Pharma, to make a generic version of Bayer’s sorafenib, a drug for liver and kidney cancer. Bayer’s product costs Rs 2,80,000 (nearly Rs 3 lakh) per patient per month. Natco offered it for Rs 8,880.
Cipla countered with a price of Rs 6,840, lower even than that of Natco. Bayer promptly filed a suit against Cipla on the basis of violation of intellectual property rights. Unfazed by the criticism, Dr Hamied says, “Of the world’s top-selling drugs, the majority of them are marketed by companies who did not invent them … I am not against multinationals, I am against monopoly.”
According to him, 95% of the multinationals’ profits are made in the markets of Europe, America and Australia. He is not after them in their domain. In his words,” First, I want what is best for my country; and second, what is best for the developing countries.”
Life Science World
This is just one India giant pharma company i mentioned which has changed the health related deaths in third world including AIDS, CANCER AND TB
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