This worth was primarily based on manufacturing volumes equal to treating 10 million folks.
If the drug was given to folks at excessive threat of contracting HIV – corresponding to homosexual or bisexual males, intercourse employees, prisoners or notably younger girls in Africa – it may “mainly shut down HIV transmission,” Hill emphasised.
“We may truly management the epidemic.”
There have been 1.3 million new HIV infections final yr, whereas 39 million persons are residing with the virus, in line with the World Well being Group.
“OPPORTUNITY TO SAVE THE WORLD”
To estimate the associated fee, the researchers studied shipments of uncooked supplies of the drug, and spoke to massive generic producers in China and India that already make its “constructing blocks,” Hill mentioned.
The worldwide crew of researchers has been confirmed proper about comparable estimates up to now, he added.
A decade in the past, the crew mentioned that the price of making Gilead’s hepatitis C drug – then priced at US$84,000 a affected person – may plummet to US$100 if generics had been allowed.
“Now it prices just below US$40 to remedy Hepatitis C,” Hill mentioned.
The brand new analysis was introduced a day after UNAIDS chief Winnie Byanyima known as on Gilead to “make historical past” by opening up Lenacapavir to the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool, which might permit generics to be offered beneath licence in low- and middle-income nations.
“Gilead has a possibility to save lots of the world,” she advised AFP.
