Cheap Indian drug saved the life of an Australian who was on the verge of having liver cirrhosis. The 61-year-old Greg Jeffery, suffering from hepatitis C, desperately needed a drug called Sivoldi to reverse the life-threatening condition. There was no problem in getting the drug, but the problem was the prohibitive cost of the tablet. One tablet was costing over 1,000 Australian dollars and the total treatment regime of 84 tablets would have been around 100,000 dollars.
Jeffery didn't have that kind of money. Desperate to source the drug at a cheaper rate, he landed in Chennai three months ago. There, he not only got the drug but bought it for less than one-tenth the price in Australia.
"The same treatment with the same drug in India is $900," Jeffery told Australian TV channel, ABC. Basically as soon as I got home I started taking it. Within 11 days all my liver functions had returned to normal and within four weeks there was no virus detectable in my blood - I was essentially cured," he told the channel.
Jeffery's story, now all over Australian media, has renewed the debate on whether life-saving drugs should be priced so high. " If you haven't got the money, for a lot of people it's a death sentence - you die," Jeffery said. "I was right on the edge of cirrhosis of the liver, once you get cirrhosis you then open up to tumours and cancer."
Jeffery is now helping other Australians in a similar situation to source the drug from India. "I get about 40 to 50 emails every day, seven days a week and they are from people who have hep C," he said.
The story is also a vindication of sorts for India's patent regime that is often criticized in the West for not honouring intellectual property rights in medicine.
