European health ministers met earlier this week in Milan to protest the exorbitant cost of hepatitis C treatment with Sovaldi.
In Western Europe, 5 million people are affected each year by hepatitis C. And the price of the reference treatment Sovaldi, manufactured by the Gilead laboratory, is controversial. Indeed, its cost amounts to 44,000 euros in Great Britain, 49,000 euros in Germany and 56,000 euros in France. At the start of the week, European health ministers met to find an alternative to a situation denounced by users in several countries. And for good reason.
In France, the bill amounts to 800 million per year for Health Insurance for 15,000 patients while its total drug budget is 24 billion euros for the same period. Suddenly, not all patients can benefit from it while many of them, from a disadvantaged background, do not have the means to pay for the treatment. In addition, the cost of manufacturing the drug is only 2.50 euros. This figure does not include research investments.
Another treatment would also be effective
For his part, the Socialist deputy, Gérard Bapt, member of the Committee on Social Affairs at the National Assembly, decided not to bring a trial to the Gilead laboratory but to attack him directly on his ground, by addressing himself to competition.
In a letter addressed to the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM), the latter remarks that the treatment proposed by the Abbvie laboratory presents “comparable efficiency for patients with, like Sovaldi, a cure rate of 90 to 100 %. “A treatment awaiting approval in Europe and the United States which could cost less, but which does not yet benefit from a marketing authorization”, the parliamentarian is surprised in his letter to the ANSM . If this is not issued, Gérard Bapt demands a “compulsory license” for the Sovaldi.
The Gilead laboratory justifies itself by claiming to charge the rich to help the poor. “If the cost were amortized over the life span, or over twenty or thirty years, the cost of treatment per year would be in the order of 2,000 euros per year, and the current debate would not take place. »Defends the director Michel Joly in an interview with The echoes. The profitability of a drug, that is to say before its patent falls into the public domain, does not exceed 10 years.
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