KUALA LUMPUR: An affordable Hepatitis C combination treatment including the new drug candidate ravidasvir has been shown to be safe and effective, with extremely high cure rates for patients, including hard-to-treat cases.
This is according to interim results from the Phase II/III STORM-C-1 trial presented by the non-profit research and development organisation Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) at the International Liver Conference in Paris recently.
Over 71 million people live with hepatitis-C worldwide, a disease which causes 400,000 deaths a year. Although highly effective treatments have existed for a number of years, less than three million people are on treatment, with more people infected every year than are put on treatment.
Largely due to the fact that treatment for Hepatitis C can be as much as US$30,000 (RM128,000) for each therapy.
This disease, which spreads from people to people, is non-gender specific, nor affected by region. And, the worst is that at times, it only shows up after 20 years of being infected. So, many cases of people seeking treatment are between the ages of 40 and 45.
The World Health Organisation aims for 80 per cent of people diagnosed with Hepatitis C virus (HCV) to be put on treatment by 2030.
“As Hepatitis-C has become a major public health concern in Malaysia, it is crucial to increase access to treatment for the benefit of the nation,” said Ministry of Health (MOH) director general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
In September 2017, the MOH issued a “government-use” license on sofosbuvir patents to allow 400,000 people living with Hepatitis C in Malaysia to access generic HCV regimens in public hospitals.
“The results indicate that the sofosbuvir/ravidasvir combination is comparable to the very best Hepatitis C therapies available today, but it is priced affordably and could allow an alternative option in countries excluded from pharmaceutical company access programs,” said Bernard Pécoul, DNDi executive director.
The trial using medicines produced by Egyptian drug manufacturer Pharco Pharmaceuticals was run by DNDi and co-sponsored by the MOH, in 10 sites in Malaysia and Thailand.
Agreements signed in 2016 and 2017 enabling the trials and patient scale-up in Malaysia set out a target price of RM1,164 for a 12-week treatment, an almost 100 per cent drop from existing treatment prices in Malaysia.