03/12/2024
During the compulsory license, a country will start making the drug themselves, or they will import the generic drug from a country that is making it. That is a perfectly legal mechanism to make sure that people can access a medicine at an affordable price, and that is what can be done with lenacapavir.
With the current timelines for voluntary licensing, it could take another 3 years before Gilead’s generic route comes to fruition, and that is a huge amount of time. In that time, we would expect, if current infection rates continue, another 4 million people will acquire HIV. We have another 2 million dying from HIV-related illnesses. That, for me, is a public health emergency.
Doing nothing means we continue to see an HIV infection every 24 seconds and an HIV-related death every minute. I think that meets the definition of a public health emergency, and that’s why countries should be going down the compulsory license.
I think governments need to really be shown what a breakthrough lenacapavir is, and given a guide to how they could get there. This ability to import the drug legally under compulsory license could stop HIV transmission.
It would be huge. If one or two countries could take this on [compulsory licensing] and demonstrate to the world that HIV transmission can be stopped, it would send shock waves. - Dr Andrew Hill, from the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Liverpool.
Read the full interview here👉 https://makemedicinesaffordable.org/the-case-for-compulsory-licensing-of-lenacapavir/
