In the coronavirus outbreak in Texas this summer, Dr. Thomas Patterson said he only had enough remdesivir, an antiviral drug, for about a third of his patients, and was forced to decide who would receive the only allowed drug in the United States. to treat COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ahmedul Kabir in Bangladesh has a lot.
“We have no shortage of remdesivir in our hospitals,” said Kabir, a professor of medicine at Dhaka Medical College. “Bangladesh is a third country in the world and we have sufficient quantities. It’s unexpected that America doesn’t do this. There deserves to be a lot of remedesivir out there.
CNN research on remdesivir shows that doctors in several emerging countries report giant drug materials, while American patients have faced shortages, even though the drug is manufactured through an American pharmaceutical company and evolved with the help of the drug. American taxpayer money.
“The government funded it and patients in hospitals like ours couldn’t get it,” Patterson, head of the infectious disease department at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, told San Antonio.
At a press conference Tuesday, doctors, lawyers and a congressman accused Trump management of not having made a greater offer of remdesivir.
“Some whose suffering can be reduced and hospitalization shortened do not get relief because of Trump’s refusal to act,” Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett said in a statement.
In a CNN statement, a spokesman for the US Department of Health and Human Services defended the president’s reinforcement decisions.
“President Trump puts American patients first and his leadership has secured more than 90% of Gilead’s publicity source on this life-saving treatment,” the spokesperson wrote, referring to the California pharmaceutical company. that manufactures remdesivir.
Data presented via Gilead Sciences to the US Food and Drug Administration does not show that remdesivir saves lives, on the contrary, it shows that the drug shortens the hospital stay, on average, from 15 to 11 days for patients with severe COVID-19. The FDA gave Gilead emergency re-employment approval in May with this data.
The drug costs $2,340 for a five-day treatment and U. S. hospitals. But it’s not the first time They don’t buy it directly as they do with other medications. Because there is not enough for everyone, HHS ensures that remdesivir is sent to hospitals.
Gilead says it has enough for the application, but doctors interviewed via CNN say they don’t have enough material for all of their patients.
UCSF Health infectious disease specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong has said that at various events he is close to having enough for his COVID-19 patients.
“We were very close to falling off the cliff, ” he said.
Chin-Hong then came up with the concept of asking nearby hospitals to borrow a component of their reemployment, promising that he would return the favor when the next shipment from his hospital arrived.
“It’s like we’re in a medieval market and we trade chickens and goats,” he says.
A July survey of 131 hospitals through the American Society of Health System Pharmacists found that nearly a third said they had earned enough reemployment to treat all their COVID-19 patients who met drug guidelines.
Kabir, the Bangladeshi doctor, said his hospital had received a lot of remdesivir because they were buying generic versions of the drug.
Doctors in other emerging countries said their hospitals were also generic.
“We have enough remdesivir in our country,” said Dr. Bilal Aziz, assistant professor at King Edward Medical University in Lahore, Pakistan.
“We have no shortage,” said Dr. Endymion Tan, an infectious disease specialist at the Metropolitan Medical Center in Manila, Philippines.
Several companies manufacture the generic Beximco Pharmaceuticals division in Bangladesh.
“We can do more. Lately we have produced around 80,000 vials consistent with the month, and we have the capacity to produce up to 150,000 vials consistent with the month,” said Rabbur Reza, managing director of Oconsistent withhating de Beximco.
But Gilead can sell remdesivir in the united Unidos. No there are generics and Gilead has no competition.
Christopher Morten, a patent law expert at New York University Law School, said the Trump administration could simply replace that if it wanted to.
Morten said the administration may simply be a law allowing the government to “open” patents so Gilead can continue to benefit from the drug, although other corporations could make generic versions of it.
“The U. S. government has not been able to do so. But it’s not the first time It still has the strength, to put it familiarly, to break patents when those patents get in the way of competition, and Gilead is guaranteed a fair payment under the same law, so Gilead would make a lot of money,” Morten said. , Deputy Director of the Technology Policy and Law Clinic at NYU Law.
He said that in the case of re-17, he believes he also has a choice for now.
The United States can legitimately claim to be a co-owner of the remdesivir patents, as government investment was required and they were required to make it, according to a co-authored article through Morten and James Krellenstein, co-founder of COVID Working Group NYC. .
“I, the United States government, co-invented and co-owned the most significant patents on remdesivir,” Morten said.
Gilead disagrees, as does HHS.
“There are many patents to remdesivir, and the U. S. government has been involved in the search for some of those patents. The U. S. government is listed as co-inventor on any of remdesivir’s existing patents,” hhS spokesman said.
Today, the US Government Accountability Office is investigating this issue.
In July, two Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Carolyn Maloney of New York, asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the discovery and the remdesivir.
“Remdesivir evolved with an estimated federal investment of $ 70 million, and Gilead has drawn on key clinical contributions from government scientists,” wrote Women of Congress.
The GAO expects to have a report until the end of the year, according to Candice Wright, acting director of GAO’s division of analysis, technology assessment and science.
She said her team spoke with officials from HHS and the Department of Defense, who have worked with Gilead on remdesivir.
“We know that there were federal contributions in peer-reviewed articles,” Wright said.
On his website, Gilead highlights the company’s paintings on remdesivir since 2014 with the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, and the National Institutes. health care.
In an email sent to CNN, Gilead spokesman Chris Ridley highlighted the role that Gilead, the government, has played in the development of the drug.
“Studies that led to remdesivir began more than ten years ago. Gilead researchers invented remdesivir, learned of its broad-spectrum antiviral activity, optimized product formulation and intensified the production process. Although government investment used to further characterize the remdesivir profile after its initial discovery, this did not result in the creation of the underlying intellectual assets minted through Gilead,” Ridley wrote.
Ridley also stated that government grants totaling approximately $76 million had been awarded to academics who collaborated with Gilead, “some of whom were used for his paintings with Gilead in redistribution. “
“Gilead has made greater investments in remdesivir studies and progression than in public sources,” he added.
But MORten, the NYU attorney, said it was transparent to him that Americans are paying twice for remdesivir: once to help expand it and a time to buy it for the COVID-19Array remedy.
“I think it’s troubling, it’s a genuine deal for Gilead,” he said.
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