The Campaign on Access to Affordable Trastuzumab (CAAT), a platform working in the  health sector to make Trastuzumab affordable, has expressed concern on the release of Report on Price Negotiations for patent drugs by the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) as it feels that this 'ill-timed move' by the government will benefit none other than big pharma companies whose patents on life-saving drugs are the main barrier in access to health for millions of Indians.

“The Campaign for Access to Affordable Trastuzumab is shocked that the Department of Pharmaceuticals is even considering the option of negotiating with multinational pharma companies for price discounts,” it said.

Expressing concern over the timing of the report, Kalyani Menon, coordinator of the CAAT, said that the report comes at a time when the ministry of health is actively exploring options such as compulsory licensing for bringing down prices of life-saving patented drugs through allowing market competition by generics and biosimilars. Trastuzumab is one of the drugs being considered for compulsory licensing. This ill-timed report will benefit only the big pharma companies, she said.

Explaining several global instances, Menon said that global experiences show clearly that measures such as negotiated price reductions do not result in any significant expansion of access, since prices continue to remain beyond the reach of most citizens.

A case in point is Brazil which tried to use price negotiations with multi-national pharmaceutical companies to bring down the price of patented HIV drugs. As a result, the price of Efavirenz (Merck) came down to US$ 760 per person per year in 2003. In contrast, when Efavirenz was brought under compulsory license in 2007, the price came down to US$ 170 per person per year, which is less than one fourth the negotiated price, Menon in her reaction to the report said.

Giving further examples, she said that a donor-supported process of negotiated price decrease in Central America and the Caribbean in 2002 brought prices of HIV drugs down to US$ 1100-1600 per patient per year. In contrast, 10 Latin American countries independently adopted an open competition-based model involving both generic manufacturers and originator companies, resulting in prices coming down from US$ 5000 to US$ 400 per patient per year.

India plays a key role as a supplier of affordable medicines to other countries in the global south. Unlike negotiated prices, which apart from being unacceptably high would apply only in India, compulsory licensing of a drug like Trastuzumab would benefit millions of people across the developing world through global marketing of cheap generic versions.

“The Campaign for Affordable Trastuzumab urges the Government of India to follow through on the strong political will shown by initiating the process of compulsory licensing for Trastuzumab. With 25,000 new cases of HER2+ breast cancer being recorded every year with most patients being young women, there is no time to waste. We look forward to a speedy notification and an accelerated process to bring biosimilars of Trastuzumab into the market. We call on our policy-makers to ensure that big pharma companies do not continue to hold us health hostage to their greed for profits,” she said.