Mary Wilson
Well-known member
COMMENTARY
July 22, 2020
By Cameron Nutt, Robert A. Bonacci, Wilfredo R. Matias and Meredith L. Kernan
Long before the arrival of COVID-19, hundreds of patients in Liberia, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were treated for Ebola with an experimental medication called remdesivir. From 2016 to mid-2019, these patients joined phase two and three clinical trials that, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, found the drug did not improve clinical outcomes.
Critically, however, the Ebola trials demonstrated that remdesivir was safe for human use. The African study participants’ courage paved the way for the NIH’s groundbreaking COVID-19 trial, which proved that remdesivir is the first effective treatment against this pandemic. Without their contributions, the NIH’s study might have started months later, leaving us without any proven therapy for COVID-19.
Here’s the problem: None of the African patients who made this possible — nor their fellow citizens — stand to have access to the medication when facing COVID-19.
While our global struggle against COVID-19 is shared, access to treatment is anything but.
... An international team of pharmacologists recently estimated that a single dose of remdesivir produced by a generic drug-maker should cost no more than 93 cents.
In late May, Gilead Sciences, which developed remdesivir, published another trial (for which one of us was an uncompensated co-investigator) demonstrating that a five-day treatment regimen was equally effective as 10 days. This suggests that the cost of treating COVID-19 with generic remdesivir should be approximately $5 — compared with the $3,120 Gilead will charge in high- and middle-income countries.
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/20...ilfredo-matias-robert-bonacci-meredith-kernan
July 22, 2020
By Cameron Nutt, Robert A. Bonacci, Wilfredo R. Matias and Meredith L. Kernan
Long before the arrival of COVID-19, hundreds of patients in Liberia, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were treated for Ebola with an experimental medication called remdesivir. From 2016 to mid-2019, these patients joined phase two and three clinical trials that, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, found the drug did not improve clinical outcomes.
Critically, however, the Ebola trials demonstrated that remdesivir was safe for human use. The African study participants’ courage paved the way for the NIH’s groundbreaking COVID-19 trial, which proved that remdesivir is the first effective treatment against this pandemic. Without their contributions, the NIH’s study might have started months later, leaving us without any proven therapy for COVID-19.
Here’s the problem: None of the African patients who made this possible — nor their fellow citizens — stand to have access to the medication when facing COVID-19.
While our global struggle against COVID-19 is shared, access to treatment is anything but.
... An international team of pharmacologists recently estimated that a single dose of remdesivir produced by a generic drug-maker should cost no more than 93 cents.
In late May, Gilead Sciences, which developed remdesivir, published another trial (for which one of us was an uncompensated co-investigator) demonstrating that a five-day treatment regimen was equally effective as 10 days. This suggests that the cost of treating COVID-19 with generic remdesivir should be approximately $5 — compared with the $3,120 Gilead will charge in high- and middle-income countries.
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/20...ilfredo-matias-robert-bonacci-meredith-kernan