MSF Secures Deals For Key Hepatitis C Medicines, Price A Fraction Of Branded Drug

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) announced today that it has secured deals for two key generic hepatitis C medicines, dropping prices dramatically.

In a statement, MSF said it secured generic medicines for sofosbuvir and daclatasvir for as low as US$1.40 per day, or US$120 per 12-week treatment course.

The two medicines were launched in 2013 by Gilead (sofosbuvir) and in 2015 by Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) (dacatasvir) for respectively US$1,000, and US$750 per pill, leading to a combination treatment course of US$147,000 per person for a 12-week treatment course, the statement said.

According to the statement, “In 2015, MSF started procuring sofosbuvir and daclatasvir from Gilead and BMS through their ‘access programs’ at a price of $1,400 to $1,800 per 12-week treatment. Today, MSF pays a fraction of that, at $120, sourced from quality-assured generic manufacturers.”

Those two breakthrough medicines show cure rates of up to 95 percent, MSF said, yet access has remained limited because of unaffordable prices, ” leading many countries to reserve treatment only for people with the most advanced stages of the disease.”

“By the end of 2016, three years after sofosbuvir was launched, only an estimated 2.1 million people globally had been treated with the medicines, leaving 69 million people still without access,” MSF said, adding that these high prices have put a major strain on health systems in wealthy countries, where in some cases treatment is being rationed, such as Australia, Canada, Italy, and the United States. This situation is a ” stark reminder of the early days of HIV treatment,” they said.

MSF made the announcement on the eve of the World Hepatitis Summit being held from 1-3 November in Sao Paolo, Brazil.