Brazil demands steep cuts in Roche AIDS drug prices

Rio de Janeiro, Aug 23: BRAZIL upped the ante on Thursday in a feud over the high cost of AIDS drugs, demanding Swiss group Roche Holding AG slash the price of one of its drugs by 40 per cent or face Brazilian production of a low-cost version.

A day after Brazil said it planned to break the patent on nelfinavir, which is sold by Roche as Viracept, the Swiss healthcare group said it was close to a cut-price deal with Brazil. “We are very close to reaching an agreement which is based upon a further, additional discount,” said Roche spokesman Daniel Piller.

But Brazil reiterated its threat to make the medicine in a state factory at a fraction of the cost. “By producing nelfinavir here in Brazil we can reduce the price by 40 per cent, so Roche would have to offer at least that,” Paulo Teixeira, the director of Brazil’s AIDS programme said.

“This is a question of absolute emergency. Brazil is not against patents, but when the pricing is abusive, it takes money away from other needy areas like malaria, tuberculosis and leprosy,” he said.

According to Roche, which now sells Viracept although the patent is held by US firm Pfizer Inc, the company already sells the drug to Brazil at less than half the US wholesale price and has offered a steeper discount in 2002.

Roche said it has cut the price of Viracept in Brazil by 35 per cent, but that an accord was within reach for further cuts in 2002. The Basel-based Roche also intends to start manufacturing Viracept tablets in Brazil next year.

Brazil’s health minister, Jose Serra, said on Wednesday he had started the process of issuing a so-called compulsory license to make nelfinavir at a Brazilian factory after failing to wring sufficient price concessions from Roche and Teixeira said there has been no contact with Roche since. “There is no doubt that the minister would be willing to talk,” Mr Teixeira said. “But at the very minimum, Roche has to offer a discount of 40 per cent.

He said that Roche’s last offer was for a discount of “less than 30 per cent.” The spat over AIDS drug pricing resurrects a dispute that grabbed headlines when big pharmaceutical companies sued South Africa over its cheap imports of generic AIDS drugs that the firms said violated their patents. The companies eventually dropped the suit, but only after critics accused them of putting profits before people’s lives.

(Reuters).