No country in the world can afford to treat every patient who has the potentially fatal liver disease hepatitis C using new drugs that cure the condition, according to World Health Organisation experts.
Their investigation shows that paying for the drug treatment for all those infected would cost a substantial proportion of a country’s annual drug budget, from 10.5% in the Netherlands to 190% in Poland. The UK would have to spend a third of its drugs budget on the medicines.
“It is a lot of money – more than most countries have to spend,” said Suzanne Hill, director of WHO’s medicines department and one of the authors of the paper published in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine.
Even though the 12-week course with the drugs sofosbuvir and ledipasvir/sofosbuvir can cure a condition that often leads to very expensive hospital treatment for complications including cirrhosis and cancer, every country is having to ration treatment. There are around 700,000 deaths a year globally from hepatitis C infection.
The UK and France are among the countries that have decided to treat only the most urgent cases.
“WHO’s recommendation is that everybody should be offered treatment,” said Hill. “The new drugs are fantastically effective and they do seem to cure people.”
The paper, which analyses the costs in 30 countries, says the current situation is unacceptable. “These prices threaten the sustainability of health systems in many countries and prevent large-scale provision of treatment,” the authors write.
“Stakeholders should implement a fairer pricing framework to deliver lower prices that take account of affordability.”
