Non-profit: Low-cost HCV drugs available with shared negotiations

The Global Procurement Fund, created by the Center for Disease Analysis Foundation, announced that utilization of their massively discounted hepatitis C treatment negotiations has not yet happened and urged countries with high burden of disease to do so.

“It has always been assumed that price was the primary hurdle stopping developing countries accessing these drugs,” Homie Razavi, PhD, managing director of CDAF, said in the release. “However, despite us negotiating prices as low as $50 for a bottle of 28 tablets of sofosbuvir, no developing country has yet placed an order through the fund.”

CDAF launched the Global Procurement Fund (GPRO) in April of 2017 and worked with more than 85 countries to develop national hepatitis plans. Two years ago, the foundation launched the Polaris Observatory, which tracks the number of individuals infected with, diagnosed with and treated for HCV and hepatitis B.

The Global Procurement Fund worked with drug manufacturers and negotiated drug prices based on pre-agreed minimum volume. Once member countries provide an estimated order size, the fund combines the orders and asks the manufacturers to provide bids. Only manufacturers with the freedom to operate are considered by the fund.

“The model we use is very similar to big-box-store where we negotiate low prices for our members based on large volume orders,” GPRO outlined in another release. “We are bringing an efficient competitive bidding process to countries where competition is often lacking.”

According to GPRO’s website, the total cost to member countries is the sum of the negotiated cost of medicines and diagnostics, plus shipping, insurance, importation taxes and the fund’s 5% fee of total price of products to cover overhead expenses and set aside funds for interest-free loans to countries that require financial support.

“The big difference between GPRO and previous initiatives is that we expect the national governments to pay for purchases in the public health sector,” Razavi said in the release. “We are working on lining up funds to help with the upfront financing and currency exchange risk, but at the end of the day, the national governments are expected to pay and this has not been easy for many countries. There is an expectation that if they wait long enough, donors will come forward to support hepatitis programs. We are trying to make it as easy as possible for low and middle-income countries to provide access to HCV treatment and diagnostics but we need the countries [to] take that first step of signing up and committing funds.”

The fund has negotiated lowered prices for the generic products sofosbuvir, daclatasvir, ledipasvir plus sofosbuvir, tenofovir and entecavir, as well as for the Cepheid GeneXpert HCV viral load and GeneXpert HPV diagnostics. – by Talitha Bennett

Reference: www.gprofund.org