It is! In the next 10-20 years hepatitis C will likely be eliminated from developed countries.
The company who makes the drug is offering it a very low price to developing countries so the impact will be worldwide.
The company who makes the drug is offering it a very low price to developing countries so the impact will be worldwide.
I'm sure that's a not insignificant amount of money for Egypt, but it's less than 1% of the price charged in the US.
[1]http://www.hepmag.com/articles/egypt_gets_sovaldi_for_cheap_...
Solvadi could be paid for with monthly payments, say, 90% of the average price of conventional Hepatitis C treatment. Once the total payments add up to the price of Solvadi, they stop.
The patient gets cured right away. The healthcare system sees a 10% savings instead of a $90,000 bill. Gilead gets a smoothed-out income stream that helps to insulate it from the feast-or-famine cycle.
What's more, this places a built-in limit on the price of the drug. If Gilead sets the price too high, then the monthly payments never add up.
In a system where the patient could switch insurers, the monthly payments would have to be imposed on the new insurer. Otherwise, we're back to the US game-theory standoff.
The interesting thing is that Sovaldi is not more expensive than earlier therapies (last generation therapies were around $85K). The issue is that Sovaldi is so good that everyone wants to take it now, where before, very few patients were willing to put up with the old therapies.