The thing with Hep C is that it’s not about anonymous statistics, it’s about real people. Here’s the story of one patient, and his wife’s journey through Interferon and failure and then to self initiated treatment and cure via the parallel import of generic DAA medications that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age:
Here is a letter to the editor that did not make the cut
Sunday 27th September 2015
Dear Editor
(Ref: Hepatitis C drug buyers club aims to set up new source of support)
In 1961 JFK uttered the immortal lines “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”.
With the passage of time, the idea we should all put something back in seems increasingly lost.
We have at our fingertips the tools to rid the world of Hepatitis C and are separated from that only by corporate avarice.
Gilead Sciences are asking for more than the entire annual PBS medications budget, used to treat all Australians for all diseases, to treat a single disease forecast to kill half as many people as breast cancer by 2030.
If this medication pricing trend continues unabated you can foresee the day we invent a cure for cancer, but people still die because only a fortunate few can afford access.
Parallel importing is a tool that has been used before to level the playing field, most notably around the pricing of HIV medications. $1000 a tablet for something that costs $1 to produce and is available overseas for $10 does not make sense.
It’s time to draw a line in the sand and make it clear patient rights deserve equal protection to patent rights.
Kind Regards
Dr James Freeman
