Turing Pharmaceuticals Acquires Daraprim and Hikes Price From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight - Where do we go from here?

 I wonder how many Nigerians are aware of the landmark event that took place at the Indian Supreme Court on April 1, 2013. The apex court ruled on that day that the Indian drug companies Cipla Ltd and Ranbaxy were in the right for "infringing" on the drug patent of the global giant Norvatis for the cancer therapy Glivec which had hitherto been out of the reach of the generality of patients.

The drug patent was about to expire, hence opening the door for much cheaper generics, when Norvatis tweaked with the delivery mechanism and filed for another patent. The aim here was to extend the life of the previous patent thus freezing out the other drug manufacturers waiting impatiently to get into the fray. Cipla Ltd and Ranbaxy ignored Norvatis  and proceeded to make generics to the cheer and relief of long suffering Indian patients, not to mention the  large army of medical tourists from all over the globe. Predictably Norvatis sued. What followed  was a long drawn out legal battle during which the likes of Aventis and GlaxoSmithKline were left shivering uncertainly in the wings. The legal fight ended on April 1, 2013, with the Indian Supreme Court throwing out the challenge. Note that Cipla and Ranbaxy (Montari)have operations in Nigeria.

The battle for Glivec and many other drugs are by no means over and continues on European and US courts and multiple drug administrations. The medical superpowers are currently in damage control mode, to ensure that this virus does not spread any further. It is however very unlikely that Europe and US will go to war over such a matter. That notwithstanding, one can imagine the fear and consternation at the very prospect of Cipla and other copycats selling cheap drugs into the Chinese market, the rest of Asia, Africa and perhaps South America. That is why US and Europe are extremely keen on writing very strict rules in the current spate of global and regional free trade treaties. The interest of the so called third world is hardly ever taken into consideration. Like this low blow by Turing Pharmaceuticals.

At this point it will be instructive to remind Nigeria that nothing in the so called new world economic order comes on a silver platter. We have to fight for every perceived advantage, or even a place at the table. Anyone with any doubt should read Dr Chukwuma Soludo's analysis of the poisoned chalice presented to Africa in the name of Equal Partnership Agreement (EPA) which appeared in The Financial Times of London and most of the leading Nigerian media in early 2013. He has had cause to revisit the issue over snd over again.

Africa remains just an observer in these developments. In many of the sectors and technologies, African countries, especially Nigeria, seem to be blissfully unaware of what is going on and the likely endgame. It is therefore not strange at all that we do not have a properly articulated viewpoint going forward in these matters. The people at Nigeria's Office of Intellectual Property  (NOTAP) probably imagine that their job is actually to take care of the economic interest of other nations and their citizens. A cursory look at China will educate NOTAP about the way to go.

In the health sector we have been so rightly focused on the fight against fake and substandard drugs that we seem to have forgotten to gear up for the next level whereby we domesticate the primary backbone without which we will forever remain compounders and tableters of active ingredients sourced from other climes. That's not what progress looks like.

DARAPRIM

And now this. The future is no longer out there in any nebulous sense but has come crashing down on us with what has just happened to the price of a basic anti-malarial staple like DARAPRIM. A price gouging hegde-fund led group, Turing masquerading as a moral player in the medical field, has recently inreased the price by 5000%.  Apparently this story has not made any blimp on the radar of Nigerian journalists on the medical beat.

We all grew up with cheap Daraprim over the past 50years. Together with treated mosquito nets, Daraprim has been a reliable ally on the prevention front in the battle against malaria.

The second line of defence is actual treatment. Any development that undermines prevention makes the battle to treat and eliminate malaria all the more difficult. I hope that all the collaborators, including our health ministries, the Carter Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other stakeholders are following this development closely. Thankfully, Mrs Hillary Clinton, a presidential candidate in the current campaigns for the US presidency, has recently lent her support to the effort to rein in the excesses of the global drug companies. It is going to be a tough battle against a determined cartel.

In this last weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, September 19 - 20, 2015, ahead of the visit of Pope Francis, leading Republican and former Presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich coauthored, with former ambassador Jim Nicholson, an open letter to His Holiness. The duo tried to disabuse the mind of the pope of the widely held notion that there is something inherently rapacious about the current brand of unbridled capitalism practiced in the United States and most of the western hemisphere. When the above story finally broke a couple of days ago about the shenanigans of companies like Turing Pharmaceuticals, it only helped to confirm a most unhealthy trend.   Against this background in the drug industry among others, Speaker Gingrich and his friend obviously have a lot more convincing to do. I wish them luck.