In a report published this Wednesday, May 8, the NGO denounces a “double standard” in the treatment of diabetes between high and low income countries.
Doctors Without Borders called on pharmaceutical companies this Wednesday, May 8, to lower the prices of insulin pens and new diabetes medications to end the “a policy of double standards”. “While insulin pens are the standard of care in high-income countries, their high price means they are almost never available to people in low- and middle-income countries, and they are rarely used by humanitarian agencies”, deplores the NGO in a report.
The leading pharmaceutical companies in the treatment of diabetes, “Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi must lower their insulin pen prices now” and, at the same time, humanitarian organizations must “integrate them more systematically into the care they provide”, says Dr Helen Bygrave, advisor to MSF’s access campaign. “There really is no excuse for the double standards that prevail today in the treatment of diabetes,” she declares in a press release, emphasizing that it could be “more affordable to use insulin pens rather than the old vials and syringes”.
“Astronomical prices”
Based on its research on production costs, MSF estimates that “analog insulin pens could be sold at a profit for as little as $111 per patient per year, which includes the insulin and the device needed to inject it”. The report details: “This is 30% less than human insulin in vials with syringes, which has always been considered the most affordable option and therefore the only one offered to people in low- and middle-income countries or in crisis contexts .”
Insulin analogues have a slightly different composition than human insulin, to change their onset and duration of action after injection, allowing greater flexibility of use for people living with the condition. diabetes.
The NGO also criticizes the American laboratory Eli Lilly and the Danish Novo Nordisk, which are the only ones to produce a new class of drugs, GLP-1 receptor agonists (aGLP-1), to treat diabetics, of practicing “astronomical prices”. “A commonly used GLP-1, semaglutide, could be sold profitably for as little as $0.89 per month, but it costs $115 per month in South Africa, $230 in Latvia and $353 in the United States,” figures from the humanitarian medical aid association.
