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Glaxo Secures Largest-Ever Sub-Saharan Africa Deal For HIV Treatment In Botswana




An HIV drug approved less than three years ago will be given to Botswana patients as part of the biggest deal ever secured by drug maker GlaxoSmithKline in Africa, Reuters reported.
This is the first time that Tivicay, or dolutegravir, will be available as a first-line treatment in a nationalized health care system in sub-Saharan Africa.
Botswana has the third highest HIV rate in the world after Lesotho and Swaziland with 21.9 percent of adults infected, according to Avert.org. That’s a lot less than in 2005, when 25.4 percent of Batswana adults had the virus.
Botswana was the first country in sub-Sahara to provide universal free antiretroviral treatment to people with HIV, Avert reported. This provided a model for other countries in the region to follow. New infections decreased from 15,000 in 2005 to 9,100 in 2013, and AIDS-related deaths were dramatically reduced from 14,000 in 2005 to 5,800 in 2013.
ViiV Healthcare — a joint venture between the U.K. drug maker GlaxoSmithKline, U.S.-based Pfizer and Japan’s Shionogi — made a deal with the government of Botswana to provide treatment to patients recently diagnosed with HIV, FinancialTimes reported.
About 75 percent of the world’s HIV-positive population lives in sub-Saharan Africa, GlaxoSmithKline said.
The World Health Organisation recommended dolutegravir as alternative first line treatment in HIV patients in late 2015.
Dolutegravir is the the second approved antiretroviral drug treatment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The first, raltegravir (Isentress), was approved in 2007, according to MedPageToday.
Dolutegravir is regarded as an attractive alternative to raltegravir because it is given once daily, at 50 milligrams, compared with 400 milligrams twice a day for the older drug. It’s also approved for children 12 years and older who weigh at least 40 kilograms.
“This tender agreement is a great moment as part of our commitment to accelerating access to our treatments in Africa,” said Dominique Limet, CEO of ViiV Healthcare. “It will allow people living with HIV in Botswana to have access to dolutegravir as part of a national test and treat initiative, locally referred to as the ‘Treat All’ program. It is even more of an achievement for us as it happens less than three years after the product was first approved and less than one year after it was included in the WHO guidelines.”
Glaxo co-founded ViiV Healthcare along with Pfizer in 2009 to pool research into HIV medications, according to the Telegraph. At the time of its 2013 approval, dolutegravir was hailed as a “very important milestone.”
In addition to Botswana, ViiV Healthcare is involved in a new national program in Lesotho to help children with HIV. The company recently extended a licence agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) allowing the adult formulation of dolutegravir to be eligible in all lower middle-income countries including several in Africa.
The U.N.’s Medicines Patent Pool enables generic versions of drugs to be available in poor countries without royalty payments.
In March, CEO Sir Andrew Witty said Glaxo would no longer seek patents for medications launched in low-income or least-developed countries, making the company’s latest drugs available to the world’s poorest people at a fraction of the commercial price.
Botswana is relatively wealthy by African standards, thanks to its diamond mines, Reuters reported. No details were provided of the value of the deal with the Botswana government.
Botswana’s very high rates of HIV diagnosis, treatment, and viral suppression are much better than most Western countries including the U.S., according to a study published in March by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, ScienceDaily reported.
Glaxo Secures Largest-Ever Sub-Saharan Africa Deal For HIV Treatment In Botswana Glaxo Secures Largest-Ever Sub-Saharan Africa Deal For HIV Treatment In Botswana Reviewed by on 2:43:00 AM Rating: 5

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