Hi GF,

Yes there was a blip, but that was it.

While the coverage in the medical press was nice virtually no patients read that sort of thing. What would have been nice, but did not happen was for the New York Times, Washington Post, or Boston Globe to pick up the story and push it into the mainstream media. Sadly the story of generics working was considered insufficiently interesting.

The blips on the traffic chart correspond closely with mainstream media attention, and to get the message out there that’s where it has to appear.

There has been interest from doctors across the world, but that will only result in a slow organic growth. What would really kick it is having patients opening the discussion of generics with their doctors, but for now most patients don’t know it’s a viable option.

It would be excellent if a program like the ABC Health Report would cover it

Yes, this is good but…..

Most sadly patients don’t know what a generic is. There is a lot of searching going on – about 2.25 million searches a month according to Google but the words ordinary people (as opposed to people on forums like this use) don’t currently bring us up:

I want you to know I did just that just this week. Opened the discussion with my doctor. Armed with a printout of the article from WebMD.
After reading for a minute he asked if he could make a copy of it. I said he could have that one because I have more copies already printed out.
I feel it definately helped to push him in the direction to write me a prescription for generic Harvoni, because after reading that he asked, Who should I make it out to, FixhepC or you?

Got that right! The US is slow to come around to generics, not sure why. I think US residents are not aware that they can legally buy generics and Customs will allow the drugs delivered to their homes. That’s what I was leery about but Customs held my pack for only 2 days and they were really cool about it, no hassle whatsoever. Also, I don’t think they pull every pack of drugs, I’m sure it’s done randomly. Wake up US!!

Couple of thoughts on this topic:
1. spreading the news ww is one parameter which is time consuming, having trust that generics do works is the 2nd parameter.
2. Barriers: Big pharma, perhaps NHS from each country, doctors not being informed about generics from India, patients not knowing there exist the cure.
3. Further barriers: distrust of patients/doctors that generics do work; place of manufacturing – low income countries (India, Bangladesh, Egypt,etc) do raise the level of distrust; sourcing possibilities: fear of getting fake medication due to scams.
4. and further barriers: literacy of patients (medical knowledge as well as english knowledge), IT resources (computer, internet, skills to search on internet)

Looking at the barriers from above, I believe this explains somehow why spreading the news will take some time. Sad that in all this time more people will die of HCV…..

Cheers