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Cipla in WHO AIDS drugs supplier list

The World Health Organisation on Wednesday included Indian drugmaker Cipla Ltd in the first edition of a preferred list of international suppliers of anti-AIDS drugs.

Cipla was one of the suppliers listed on website www.who.int/medicines.

Other suppliers named are international drug majors GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories, Roche Holding, French firm Doms Recordati and Spanish firms Combino Pharm SL and Laboratorios Cinfa.

Cipla's aciclovir, lamivudine, zidovudine and nevirapine anti-AIDS drugs and two other drugs for opportunistic infections -- ciprofloxacin and vinblastine -- received approval.

Cipla, which shook the pharmaceutical industry in February 2001 by offering to supply a generic cocktail of the drugs stavudine, lamivudine and nevirapine to charity Medecins Sans Frontieres for less than $1 per patient per day, a thirtieth of the US price then.

GlaxoSmithKline owns the patent on lamivudine, Bristol-Myers Squibb the patent on stavudine and Germany's Boehringer Ingelheim the patent on nevirapine.

Indian law allows drugmakers to make drugs still under patent elsewhere in the world as long as they use a process different from the patented process.

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