Brazil Reaches AIDS Drug Deal With Abbott

BRASILIA, Brazil -- Brazil has reached an agreement with U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturer Abbott Laboratories Inc. to lower AIDS drug Kaletra's price, heading off a possibility the country would break the patent, the health ministry said Tuesday.

In a statement, the health ministry said the deal would reduce the price of Kaletra to 63 cents a pill down from its current price of $1.17, saving the government $339 million over six years.

"With the agreement, the need for breaking the patent is suspended," Health Minister Jose Saraiva Felipe said at a press conference in Brasilia. "The price we reached is what the national AIDS program could pay."

In a June, Brazil's health ministry had threatened to break the patent on Kaletra and produce the drug itself at government laboratories unless the company substantially lowered the price of the medication or transferred the drug's patent to the Brazilian government.

In July, outgoing Health Minister Humberto Costa announced a deal, but shortly after taking over for Costa, Felipe announced the deal was suspended and Brazil would continue negotiating with Abbott.

Kaletra is one of more than a dozen medications that make up the so-called drug cocktail used to treat patients with HIV or AIDS, but the health ministry said its price previous to the agreement was so high that it endangered the sustainability of Brazil's AIDS program.

Abbott from its headquarters in the U.S. praised Tuesday's deal.

"This is a good long-term agreement that provides for a continuing supply for genuine Kaletra for Brazilian patients," said Brian Kyhos, director of public affairs at Abbott. "It was important for Abbott that the agreement respects our intellectual property."

Brazil in recent years repeatedly had threatened to break patents of AIDS drugs from several companies. The government has been successful in reaching substantial price reductions, but never actually broke a patent of an AIDS drug.

The United Nations regards Brazil's AIDS program as a model for treating the disease in the developing world. The government provides AIDS drugs free-of-charge to those who need them, currently about 160,000 patients.

The free drugs have cut Brazil's death toll from AIDS to levels similar to those in Europe or the U.S. Frank safer-sex campaigns in place for more than a decade have helped keep Brazil's HIV infection rate close to that seen in Western Europe, which is among the lowest in the world.