NEWSWEEK: Why don’t drug companies drop the price of AIDS drugs in Africa? STURCHIO: Five companies, including Merck, have made a strong public commitment to lower prices to make them affordable in the developing world. That will make a huge difference for people living with HIV in Africa. But even if the drugs were free, there would still be a tremendous problem in providing access for everyone, which is why we need to work on sustainable financing and AIDS prevention.
Critics say that because private drug companies must cover costs, whatever price reductions you offer will not be enough. Can you license African manufacturers to reproduce your patented drugs at a lower price? What would a voluntary license accomplish that can’t be accomplished with us? Who else will be able to manufacture the drugs as well as we can? I find it hard to see how it would increase access. Also, drug production requires expertise that countries in the developing world don’t have.
But Brazil manufactures generics at a fraction of the cost, and now that government can afford to treat people with HIV. Merck supports generic competition. What [AIDS activists] don’t say is that there is a difference between generics and illegal copies. Nothing is preventing countries from acquiring generics. What we want to stop is illegal copies of our products… In most of Africa our products are not patented, so why haven’t generic manufacturers flooded Africa? Because there is no market, there is no money.
What about parallel trade–letting poor countries shop the world for the best prices? The problem is with parallel traders rather than parallel trade itself. Parallel traders buy the drugs where they are cheapest and sell them at a higher price to other countries. Take the case of Spain and the U.K. In Spain, drugs are very cheap, so parallel traders were buying huge quantities of drugs and selling them at a much higher price in the U.K., drying up Spain’s supply. The Spanish government eventually had to come out with a law saying that traders had to supply the Spanish market first… Parallel trade is not a solution any more than drug donations are. The only solution will come through sustainable programs of growth and development [for Africa].
Who should take the lead in combating the HIV/AIDS crisis? Everybody must work together. We feel very strongly that the public/private sector partnership has a lot of promise.
Some 12,000 people attended this conference. Has it increased understanding? We need less confrontation and more cooperation. We need to find common ground to solve this terrible problem. Everybody could do more.
