Ensuring Affordable Access to Medicines

Credit: Clinton Foundation President Clinton at an HIV clinic in Ethiopia

There is no treatment without drugs and diagnostics. In order to make treatment affordable and sustainable in the developing world, CHAI has worked with several drug and lab manufacturers to lower prices of essential medicines and diagnostics.
Accomplishments include:

• Lowered the price of the adult first-line regimen to a ceiling price of $140 in 2003, representing a more than 50 percent decrease in the price of these medicines at that time. Since then, CHAI has also lowered the price of CD4 and viral load tests, rapid tests, infant diagnostics, key second line medicines and pediatric ARVs.
• Announced a reduction in the price of pediatric fixed-dose combinations (FDC) to below $60 per patient per year in November 2006; less than two years earlier, the price of treatment for children was 10 times that amount.
• Negotiated lower pricing for eight second-line drugs in 16 formulations, which President Clinton announced in May 2007.

Today, 73 countries are members of our Procurement Consortium and have access to this pricing. In addition, CHAI is beginning to engage in similar work for medicines to treat malaria and ready-to-use therapeutic foods to treat malnutrition.