A new affordable combination treatment for hepatitis C patients with a 97 percent cure rate was announced today.
According to a Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) press release, the combination treatment including new drug candidate ravidasvir showed safe, and with “extremely high cure rates for patients, including hard-to-treat cases.”
Medicines produced by the Egyptian drug manufacturer Pharco Pharmaceuticals were put on trial by DNDi and co-sponsored by the Malaysian Ministry of Health in ten sites in Malaysia and Thailand, the release said.
“Agreements signed in 2016 and 2017 enabling the trials and patient scale-up in Malaysia set out a target price of US$300 for a 12-week treatment, an almost 100% drop from existing treatment prices in Malaysia,” it said.
According to the release, over 71 million people live with hepatitis C worldwide, with 400,000 deaths a year. Less than 3 million people are on treatment, “with more people infected every year than are put on treatment.”
In September 2017, the government of Malaysia issued a “government-use” licence on sofosbuvir patents to allow 400,000 people living with hepatitis C in Malaysia to access generic HCV regimens in public hospitals.