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Cipla cuts AIDS drugs price by 39% for domestic market

Drugmaker Cipla Ltd, which stunned global drug firms in February by offering a three-drug cocktail to fight AIDS to the world's poor at less than $1 a day, said on Thursday it had slashed its domestic price for the combination by 39 per cent.

India's third largest drugmaker by market share said in a statement it had reduced the price of the lamivudine, stavudine and nevirapine cocktail to Rs 2,130 a month from Rs 3,495.

The new price took effect on Tuesday.

"We are passing on to patients the impact of cost savings from improved production processes," a Cipla official said.

"We want to make the treatment affordable to more Indian patients."

But the three-drug cocktail's annual price per patient in India actually works out substantially higher than Cipla's lowest international price of $350, offered to French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Local taxes and Cipla's margins to retailers push the domestic price up to $542.10.

No decision had yet been taken on cutting international prices, said the official, who declined to be identified.

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

Cipla is able to offer the drugs at such a low price because, like other Indian firms, its production costs are much lower than those of global firms.

It also does not have to invest heavily in research as Indian law allows firms to copy drugs under patent in the West, provided they use a different process.

In two weeks, Cipla plans to launch a copy of efavirenz, an AIDS drug for which US giant Merck & Co holds the patent, the official said.

Earlier this week, the company launched a combination tablet of stavudine and lamivudine, the first of its kind in the world, he added.

Cipla also cut prices of other AIDS drugs like zidovudine, didanosine and indinavir by 14-33 per cent from Tuesday.

The company announced the price cut after Indian markets closed on Thursday.

Cipla's shares ended up 0.53 per cent at 1,117.60 rupees on the Bombay Stock Exchange, while the Sensex closed up 2.27 per cent.

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