Brazil Gets Roche to Cut Price of Drug

Under pressure from Brazil, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche agreed Friday to cut the price of its AIDS drug nelfinavir by 40% in that country, which Health Minister Jose Serra called a victory for developing nations.

The discount is in line with Brazil’s demands. Brazil stepped up pressure on Roche last week, when Serra announced after months of talks that his country would break the patent on nelfinavir, a protease inhibitor, and start producing it in February for a sharply reduced cost.

“Pharmaceutical companies have to realize that pricing should be different for developing countries. . . . Our resources are tight,” Serra said.

The latest battle between Brazil and Roche has revived the debate about pricing of AIDS drugs in developing countries--a debate that came to a head when big pharmaceutical firms tried to sue South Africa over its cheap imports of AIDS drugs.

The companies eventually dropped the suit, but only after critics accused them of putting profits before people’s lives.

In Brazil, Roche is the second multinational to slash prices on AIDS drugs after the health ministry threatened to violate patents and produce them at a state laboratory.

In March, U.S. drug maker Merck & Co. cut prices on two AIDS drugs used in the anti-AIDS cocktail by 65% and 59%, respectively.

Under Brazilian law, the government can issue a compulsory license to make a patented drug when a national emergency is invoked or there are cases of abusive pricing.

Brazil already produces eight of the 12 drugs in the anti-AIDS cocktail, but it started making them before its 1997 patent law went into effect. The drugs are distributed free as part of Brazil’s widely hailed AIDS program.

The price of nelfinavir will fall to 64 cents a pill from $1.07.

In absolute numbers, Brazil has the highest number of AIDS cases in Latin America, with an estimated 597,000 infections.