hi,
Hope everyone is feeling well today,
I read this last night & thought it was relevant to this discussion, it's about big pharma, pricing, global access to HCV meds by Els Torreele, the Director of Access to Medicines, Public Health Program, Open Society Foundations.
Really worth reading & exploring the whole blog, a lot of good links in the body of that article, also If you would like to contribute a guest post on that blog, there is a contact details there.
from the blog:
"The unaffordability of medicines is no longer just a problem for poor people in developing countries—it is a global public health emergency. Excessive prices stand between North American and European patients and life-saving treatments. Strained health budgets lead states and insurers to delay or ration expensive medicines and increase out-of-pocket expenses. To get the drugs they need, patients must suffer serious “financial toxicity,” as cancer doctor Leonard Saltz poignantly puts it, or forego treatment altogether.
"
this is part 1:
blogs.plos.org/yoursay/2015/10/13/talkin...access-to-medicines/
part 2 is written by a Jessica Wapner, a freelance US science writer, activist, blogger, most enjoyable reading.
Here she explains how the big pharma works out their drug pricing strategy, like how do you get from $101 - the real cost of tx with Sofo to $50000 or more depending in which country you happened to live :
blogs.plos.org/yoursay/2015/10/15/talkin...-post-will-cost-you/
Geno 3, Fibro 8.7 pKA, tx experinced in 2005 - Peg/Riba, relapsed.
Started tx 1/12/2015 with Indian Sofo & Chinese Dac.
5 weeks result all normal, ALT 18 - down from ALT 73 at the start of tx.
5 weeks HCV PCR RNA - UND. - down from 2 ML
9 weeks HCV PCR RNA - UND.