By Raqib Hameed Naik, Twocircles.net,
New Delhi: Yusuf Khwaja Hamied, an Indian scientist and a Non-Executive Chairman of Cipla, a generic pharmaceuticals company has been featured in the reputed medical journal The Lancet, ranked at number two for its global influence in its November issue over his giant leap as the leader in the Indian generic drug industry and providing patients life-saving medicines regardless of their ability to pay.
(Photo Credit: www.theage.com.au)
Hamied who was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian honour by Government of India in 2005 is best known outside India for defying large Western pharmaceutical companies in order to provide generic AIDS drugs and treatments for other ailments primarily affecting people in poor countries.
“We are big on volume, but low on cost. If we sold our drugs at US prices we would be five times larger than Pfi zer”, he was quoted in The Lancet.
As of CIPLA, Yusuf Hamied keeps a close watch on his family’s generic drugs giant, which turns over US$2 billion annually and employs around 26 000 people in India and several other locations worldwide.
“Despite his business acumen and personal wealth, Hamied talks passionately about his lifelong crusade to ensure that pharmaceuticals are accessible and aff ordable to all. His genius, and CIPLA’s success, stems from his mastery at reverse engineering of patented drugs, in particular in reformulating the active pharmaceutical ingredient,” wrote The Lancet in its latest issue.
“Our R&D at CIPLA is targeted at incremental innovation, how to change and improve a product that already exists,” Hamied explained to The Lancet.
“While Hamied and CIPLA gained increasing recognition for their generic drug output, and their courage to challenge multinationals over patent disputes, it was Hamied’s defiance against the multinationals over access to affordable antiretroviral therapies for HIV that has become folklore. In September, 2000, Hamied spoke at a meeting of European Union Health Ministers and Chief Executives of major pharmaceutical multinationals, and quietly dropped a bombshell: he proposed plans for producing a generic antiretroviral cocktail for around $800 per person per year, a fraction of the $14 000 being charged by the multinationals,” The Lancet further wrote.
In February, 2001, news about Hamied’s proposals to give affordable access to anti-retrovirals—and now at only $1 a day—became front-page news. “And I want to make this very clear, despite what the multinationals say, I abide by the laws of the country in which I do business. I am not against patents, I am against monopolies”, he told The Lancet.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, UN chief Ban Ki-moon named Yusuf Hamied to a high-level panel on health technology innovation and access, in an effort to escalate investments in research and development for diseases where financial returns are not guaranteed.
Yusuf will be part of the 16-member panel that will be co-chaired by former President of Switzerland Ruth Dreifuss and former President of Botswana Festus Mogae.
The UN had said that Hamied has led efforts to treat and eradicate AIDS and other diseases in the developing world.