By Tendai Chisiri
To continue pressuring pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences to stop its greedy tactics and put lives before profits, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Zimbabwe held a media briefing in Harare on March 29 2023 as Gilead is one of the worst offenders of big pharma profiteering, and at the same time, it has priced several of its HIV and hepatitis C drugs out of reach for many people.
Gilead which uses United States of America government funds is among the top 15 largest biopharmaceutical firms in the world, generating over $27 billion in revenue and paying its CEO over $19 million in 2021 alone. In lower-income countries and consistently blocks attempts to introduce cheaper, generic versions of its medicines.
At the media briefing, AHF Advocacy, Policy and Marketing African Bureau Director Oluwakemi Gbadamosi revealed that Gilead Sciences is having monopoly on drugs that are very important to patients
“AHF is taking its grassroots campaign global to raise awareness about Gilead’s shameful practices and calling on the company to stop ever greening patents on existing HIV/AIDS drugs like Truvada – this is exploitation, not innovation, open the license for the generic production of the hepatitis C drug Harvoni to all low- and middle-income countries, without exception, for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, sell or license remdesivir for generic distribution at a non-profit price, license technology to produce treatment for cryptococcal meningitis to generic manufacturers and link executive compensation to the impact on positive public health outcomes and access to medicines in developing countries”, she told the media.
“Gilead has harmed people living with HIV worldwide for over 20 years by securing continual patents, known as ‘ever greening,’ and generating billions of dollars by creating a monopoly on some of the most effective and well-tolerated antiretroviral
drugs to treat HIV,” said AHF Africa Bureau Chief Dr. Penninah Iutung in a press statement.
“As a leading global HIV/AIDS organization with over 1.7 million patients in care across 45 countries, including nearly 871,000 in 13 African countries, it is our responsibility at AHF to take a stand and call out Gilead so that governments and decision-makers everywhere put collective pressure on it to prioritize lives over obscenely high profits”, added Bureau Chief.
But people living with HIV are not the only ones affected by Gilead’s greed. A highly effective hepatitis C drug costs $1,000 per pill, and a 12-week course of treatment has a retail price of over $90,000 in the U.S. A generic version of the same drug costs only $4 per pill in India, but according to Médecins Sans Frontières, Gilead has excluded 50 middle-income countries from access to the generic, discounted price. These excluded countries include Jamaica, Tunisia, the Philippines, Ukraine, and Venezuela, among others.
“Gilead must be held accountable for arbitrarily placing a price on who lives and who dies by keeping the most effective, modern, and lifesaving medicines out of reach of millions of people in low- and middle-income countries,” said AHF Director of Global Advocacy and Policy Guillemin Alaniz in a press statement.
“Gilead is notorious for exploiting patent monopolies on blockbuster drugs to enrich itself and its shareholders. It uses R&D [research and development] costs as an excuse when those aspects are often funded by taxpayers. For their generosity, the public and lower-income countries are rewarded with astronomical drug prices. Our global advocacy campaign is meant to let everyone know about Gilead’s greedy tactics and make lifesaving medicines accessible for everyone, not just people in rich countries.”
A group of nearly 150 nongovernmental organizations, including AHF and MSF, wrote a letter recently to Gilead demanding it expand access to its patented COVID-19 treatment candidate drug remdesivir. Gilead holds the patent on remdesivir in 70 countries worldwide, and there are no production sites for the drug outside the U.S. In the face of a huge demand for remdesivir, MSF says Gilead is taking advantage of the patent monopoly to limit access to the drug and prevent generic competition. Meanwhile, millions of people with COVID-19 risk dying due to a lack of access to effective treatments.
Despite claims that it uses its enormous profits to develop new drugs, Gilead all too often buys up publicly funded research on new medicines, brings them to market at inflated prices, and rewards its executives with enormous pay packages while delivering above-market stock prices and dividends for its shareholders.
It’s time that Gilead stops the greed AHF pleads. AHF’s Gilead advocacy can be found at gilead.org
AHF Zimbabwe Country Manager, Dr Ernest Chikwati at the media briefing in Harare said generic and patent drugs are the same. “It’s like having Pain-eeze and Panadol. There are basically the same. There is no reason the other should be costly. It’s only tha the patent ones have the big pharmaceuticals’ rights so they charge whatever they want”, he said.
National Aids Council Communications Officer, Tadiwa Nyatanga on behalf of NAC and the health ministry thanked AHF for organising the event. “We want to thank AHF for organising the event. We appreciate more of this engagement in future. Treatment of HIV and AIDS had a good discourse”, she said.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation led a rally in 2022 and protest at drug maker Gilead Sciences’ headquarters in Foster City, CA; Washington, DC; and Miami, FL. The protest targeted Gilead’s move to undermine safety net providers’ access to 340B drug pricing program benefits. Gilead now becomes the 15th drug company to illegally restrict access to certain drugs.
Picture caption:AHF Advocacy, Policy and Marketing African Bureau Director Oluwakemi Gbadamosi and AHF Zimbabwe Country Manager Dr Ernest Chikwati, Credit: Health Times
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