Skip to main content

Affordable generic HIV drug is launched in Kenya


A new affordable generic version of a frontline antiretroviral drug was launched in Kenya on 28 June 2017, the first time that HIV patients will have access to the more affordable version of the treatment.

Dolutegravir (DTG) will be available to patients through a partnership between the Kenyan Ministry of Health and the Geneva-based company Unitaid. 

DTG has been the preferred first-line treatment in the United States and Canada since 2014, a year after it came onto the market. Prior to the current introduction, Kenyan patients paid $50-$60 for a 30-day supply pack. This generic version costs about $4 a pack.

The generic DTG launch is part of a $34-million three-year Optimal ARV project by Unitaid and the Clinton Health Access Initiative aimed at accelerating access to affordable antiretroviral treatments across 11 countries.

Globally, there are more than 36 million people living with HIV, of which roughly half are untreated. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that by expanding the use of antiretroviral therapy, almost 600,000 deaths can be prevented each year by 2020. 
Scaling up HIV treatment in low- and middle-income countries has been a major health success over the past 15 years. However, ensuring that more people living with HIV have access to medicine is crucial to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

DTG was approved for use in 2013 in the United States and Canada, and was adopted the following year by the European Commission as a first-line drug. Since 2015, WHO has also recommended DTG as the alternative first-line treatment. Last year, Botswana became the first African country to purchase DTG.

DTG has been recognized as the optimal treatment in recent years because of its superior efficacy: providing better treatment outcomes to patients taking them, fewer side effects, and higher barrier resistance, meaning the HIV virus is less able to develop resistance. If resistance to HIV medicine builds, a patient must be switched to second- or third-line treatments that can cost up to 10 times more.

The generic DTG will be offered through a “catalytic procurement” process that will initially work with public health facilities, prioritizing patients intolerant of the current first-line treatment, Efavirenz.

Over the next six months, Kenyan health officials will have an opportunity to address large-scale rollout plans, discuss how health care providers can access the medicine, and prepare distribution channels before prescribing significantly higher volumes next year.

Twenty-seven thousand people in Kenya are expected to benefit from the DTG treatments.

Devex, 28 June 2017




MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou
8 comments
Read more