On Wednesday, 24 May 2017, Knowledge Ecology International delivered the following intervention on antimicrobial resistance. This statement was read by Andrew Goldman.
KEI would like to call attention to a proposal introduced in the United States Congress, as Senate Bill 771, sponsored by 16 US Senators, and HR 1776, which has 14 sponsors in the House of Representatives.
SEC. 409K of the bill is titled, “PRIZE FUND FOR NEW AND MORE EFFECTIVE TREATMENTS OF BACTERIAL INFECTIONS.”
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23 May 2017
Groups ask Army to reconsider decision that would allow French firm to charge the US anything it wants on a federally funded Zika vaccine
CONTACT: Zack Struver, zack.struver@keionline.org, +1 (914) 582-1428
Andrew Goldman, andrew.goldman@keionline.org
James Love, james.love@keionline.org, +1 (202) 361-3040
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The Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards asked the U.S. Army to require Sanofi to charge a reasonable price for a taxpayer-funded Zika vaccine, in a letter dated May 10, 2017.
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Today I published a timeline on the collaboration between Sanofi and the U.S. Army regarding the development of a vaccine for the Zika virus.
One major issue that we have raised is on the price of the Zika Vaccine. KEI and other groups have asked the Army to ensure that Sanofi does not charge U.S. taxpayers a higher price than in other high-income countries. This is not a remote concern. Recently, we published a blog showing that Sanofi charges Americans four to eight times more for its MS drug Aubagio (teriflunomide) compared to other high-income countries. If Sanofi refuses to agree to a reasonable pricing provision, then we know that Sanofi wants to keep open the option of charging the United States the highest price in the world for a drug funded by American taxpayers.
The timeline provides the dates of several key events, such as the filing of patent applications, the dates of the Army/Sanofi CRADA and grants from BARDA, the signing of the Principles of Collaboration with the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), the publication of Federal Register notices on the intent of the Army to grant exclusive licenses on patents, responses by patient and public interest groups, the New York Times op-ed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and the response by Dr. Elias Zerhouni on behalf of Sanofi, and the letter from members of the House of Representatives.
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For quite a more detail on this issue, see /zika.
2016 January: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) begins development of a vaccine candidate for Zika virus, based on its work in developing vaccines “against other flaviviruses, such as yellow fever, dengue and Japanese encephalitis.”
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On May 3, 2017, 29 civil society organizations and 33 health professionals, activists, and economists — including Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz — asked delegates to the World Health Assembly (WHA) to support a feasibility study on the progressive delinkage of the costs of research and development from the price of cancer medicines. The groups and experts sent a letter to the delegates.
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