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WHO Wants New Hepatitis C Drug Accessible to All
- Updated: April 9, 2014
In an attempt to make things easier for the health of patients, WHO has said that they are working on trying to introduce new hepatitis C drug at affordable rates which is accessible to all.
The UN agency said that they believe that at the moment the new hepatitis C drug from Gilead Sciences is recommended, but the cost of the pill has to come down which will make things possible for the people.
The new drug offers a cure for the liver-damaging virus that is affecting many people worldwide. However, the pills cost around $1000 per day and that is something that WHO is not happy about.
At the latest meeting of international liver experts in London, WHO strongly recommended new drugs from Gilead and Johnson and Johnson as the first treatment guideline, but said that the cost of the drug is a major hurdle. The UN agency said that there are approximately 150 million people across the globe that suffer from hepatitis C infections and therefore they need better drugs that can battle such virus without cutting into the budget of the patients.
WHO mentioned that Gilead’s Sovaldi are far more effective and tolerable and has managed to cure in more than 90% of the cases. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies claim that the high price of the drug is to recover the cost the development as these drugs were made only after many fail attempts and that they have invested lot of money on all their development programs in the past.
