Here is some food for thought mentioned to me by Dr Andrew Hill from the University of Liverpool in the UK.
The current pricing and limited access to Harvoni, Eplcusa and other new generation Hepatitis C medicines just might be part of a well thought out plan by GILEAD and the other Big Pharma companies to maximise profits for the longest possible time.
Here is why:
At the moment there are about 250 million people on the Earth living with ...Hep C.
The average increase in new infections of Hep C is about 10% in most countries.
The way things are now the the number of people treated globally for Hep C is the same as the number of new HCV infections . So new infections and people being cured are about the same, that is about 1 million per year. So at the moment we are not lowering the overall size of the global HCV epidemic, despite having super-cheap, highly effective, curative treatments available..
Such a situation plays very well into the greed and profit making plans of Big Pharma. They will delay making these medicines available on an affordable global level until they have squeezed every last bit of profit out of our world’s health services, insurance companies and every individual person who can possibly afford to pay their high prices.
This is truly a demonstration of the worst features of international corporate behaviour and it is hardly mentioned in the global press.
Next year about 700,000 people will die as a result of Hepatitis C, more than any other infections disease. Even though there is a cheap and effective cure. This shows the extraordinary power and influence of Big Pharma that the press say nothing about it and the United Nations says nothing about it.