This refers to an article captioned 'Cancer patients welcome Court decision against Glivec EMR,' which has appeared on Pharmabiz.com on February 2 from your Bangalore bureau. The article in the first paragraph states erroneously that the lawyer's collective fight against Affordable Medicines and Treatment (AMTC) against Glivec caused tremendous public outcry as prices rose in India from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1.2 lakh per month due to exclusive rights given to Novartis by the government.

Let me begin saying that the price of Glivec has remained unchanged since its launch in the Indian market and that the grant of exclusive marketing rights (EMR) had absolutely no impact on the price of the product. It is therefore highly misleading and damaging to our reputation to state that there was a public outcry as prices rose in India from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1.2 lakh per month due to the exclusive rights given to Novartis by the government.

Furthermore, even before the EMR was granted to Novartis in India, Novartis had put in place the Glivec International Patient Assistant Programme (GIPAP), a patient-directed assistance programme, which as the name suggests is a global programme and not specific to India. All patients suffering from Philadelphia chromosome positive chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) or C-KIT positive gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST) who cannot afford the cost of the Gilvec therapy and are non-insured are eligible to apply for GIPAP and are provided Glivec free of charge.

GIPAP is one of the most generous and far-reaching patient assistance programmes ever developed for cancer therapy. As date, there are more than 5,000 patients who receive Glivec absolutely free of charge while a minuscule 45 patients pay for Glivec and these are reimbursed later. In other words, 99% of the patients who are currently on Glivec, receive the drug free of charge while only 1% of the patients who are on Glivec, pay for it.

Ranjit Shahani
Vice Chairman & MD
Novartis India Limited