By Victoria Ojeme
ABUJA— Pharmaceutical companies in India has reduced the cost of drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS and cancer by almost 75%, as part of effort to boost the fight against the deadly diseases  in Africa.

The India High Commissioner in Nigeria, Mahesh Sachdev stated  in the  Embassy’s weekly bulletin obtained at the weekend in Abuja that, Africa benefitted from India ’s  export of  $1.8 billion worth of  low priced drugs for the treatment of HIV and cancer to the continent in 2011.

According to him, “as evidenced by $1.8 bn Indian pharma exports to Africa last year, this frugal innovative “Low Cost, High Volume” strategy does seem to work by offering hitherto unaffordable generic but genuine medicines to the African patients.

Speaking on the latest price slash of generic drugs for the treatment of cancer by Indian pharmaceutical companies, Ambassador Sachdev said some of the companies had in  May this year, “ introduced new anti-cancer medicines at prices that were up to 75% lower than comparable products in the market.

“Indian being a big market with large number of domestic producers, the medicines are normally competitively priced. However, there are exceptions: for instance, Bayer sells the branded “Nexavar”, a treatment for kidney and liver cancer, at Rs 284,428/- per month or nearly N28,000/- per day (Re 1 = Naira 3),  clearly not a medicine priced within reach of a common Indian patient. This week, Cipla has offered its generic equivalent “Sorafenib” at 6,840/- per month or at less than quarter of Nexavar’s price”

“Cipla did not stop at just making the kidney cancer treatment much cheaper but went a step ahead by reducing cost of treatments for lung & breast cancer and brain tumour drugs: Cipla’s Lung & breast cancer drug Gestinib (sold under brand name Iressa by AstraZeneca for Rs 10,000/-) will cost Rs 4,250/-, while prices of is Temozolamide (sold by German pharma company Schering), used to treat brain tumor, have been cut from Rs 20,000/- to 5,000/” he added.

The Indian envoy stated further that, the price cut by Indian pharmaceutical companies was informed by its belief in the concept of the  “process patient and not the product patent. Though multinationals have continued to attempt at getting product patents in India, their argument about need to valorise their intellectual property has to be circumscribed by overall need to offer affordable healthcare to the needy

He stated that Indian pharmaceutical companies had always been at the forefront of producing low priced drugs for the African continent, when other companies from other continents sought to sell the same drugs to Africa at a  much higher rate, recalling, the offer of some Indian pharmaceutical companies in 2000, “ to sell first generic version of anti-HIV Triple Cocktail drug to African patients for $360/year per person instead of $10,000/- being charged by Pharma MNCs.”

“Now the same drug sells for less than $ 100/year. The availability of cheaper Indian generics has been the most potent weapon to contain and roll-back Aids epidemic in Africa ”Ambassador Sachdev added.