This article originally appeared in the New York Times – May 8, 2015
- Donald G. McNeil Jr
The World Health Organization put five new hepatitis C drugs on its essential medicines list for the first time on Friday, including drugs that cost $1,000 a pill or more in wealthy countries. The new drugs are ground-breaking because they usually cure quickly with minimal side effects.
Inclusion on the list, which the W.H.O. considers “the minimum medicine needs for a basic health‐care system,” carries no legal weight but indicates to governments, regulators and drug companies that those medicines should be made available to poor countries at low prices. The list includes the generic ingredients of Sovaldi and Harvoni, which cost $84,000 or more per treatment in the United States.
The W.H.O. also added four antibiotics to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis and 16 new cancer drugs to the list.
As more residents of poor countries survive into middle and old age, diseases that kill later in life, including tuberculosis, hepatitis and cancer, are growing in importance as cause of death.
Advocates for the world’s poor praised the W.H.O.’s decision. “This is huge,” said Ellen ‘t Hoen, an expert in medicine law and former director of the Medicines Patent Pool.
See the original article here.
