Cipla offers cheap AIDS drugs to poor

The cut-price treatment is aimed primarily at those infected with the HIV virus in Africa, where anti-retroviral drugs commonly used in the West are out of reach financially.

The average cost of AIDS drug cocktails in developed markets is $10,000 to $15,000 a year. Leading drug companies have recently negotiated discount deals with Senegal, Uganda and Rwanda which bring the cost down by up to 90 per cent — but that still leaves their products at a premium to Cipla’s offer.

"We are offering the drugs at a humanitarian price," Hamied said.

"Our normal price — at which we sell to wholesalers in India — is $1,200 per patient per year. We also have a price of $600 which we offer governments under tender, and then there is the humanitarian price," he said.

Cipla is India’s third-largest drug company by domestic sales, and makes a wide range of medicines including anti-infectives, asthma drugs and AIDS medications.

"The humanitarian price is only for MSF, and only if they distribute it free, anywhere in the world," Hamied said.

He said it had not been decided how much MSF would buy from Cipla.

Indian drug companies are allowed by local laws to make drugs that are under patent elsewhere in the world, providing they use a process that differs from the original patented process.

Like other Indian companies, Cipla makes copies of drugs patented elsewhere at a fraction of the original cost. Indian drug prices are among the lowest in the world.

AIDS campaigners in Africa have been exerting pressure on multinational drug companies to make best selling AIDS drugs available to the poorest in the developing world. Cipla said its approach provided a cheaper alternative to patented AIDS drugs.