Rio de Janeiro, July 26 (dpa/GNA) – Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has called for a drastic reduction in the price of a key medication, used to prevent HIV infection, as the International AIDS Conference begins in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.
“No one should be excluded from HIV prevention simply because a medicine is being kept artificially expensive,” said Melissa Scharwey, a global health expert at MSF.
The organization is demanding a price of around $40 per person per year for the drug lenacapavir, and for the widespread production of lower-cost generic versions.
According to MSF, US pharmaceutical company Gilead charges $28,000 for a year’s supply of lenacapavir, which requires two injections. This price applies to the treatment of people already living with HIV in the United States, not to its use as a preventive medication. MSF argues that this is unaffordable for health care systems in low- and middle-income countries.
For HIV prevention, lenacapavir is administered twice a year by injection, offering an alternative to the daily tablets used for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). According to the German AIDS Action Alliance, around 1.2 million people become newly infected with HIV each year worldwide, while approximately 570,000 people die from AIDS-related illnesses.
For the first time, more than half of all new HIV infections now occur outside sub-Saharan Africa, according to the organization. At the same time, global efforts to combat HIV are under increasing pressure because of a sharp decline in international health funding. The conference in Rio de Janeiro, organized by the International Aids Society, runs until Friday.
GNA