Member-only story
The $10,000 HIV Drug That India Started Selling For $1 A Day
How India Legally Robbed Big Pharma and Became The World’s Pharmacy
The war for global health was not fought in laboratories—it was fought in the fine print of patent law.In December 2013, at a Financial Times healthcare conference in London, the global CEO of Bayer, Marijn Dekkers, dropped all diplomatic pretense and stated the quiet part out loud -
He was not talking about an anti aging cream or an elective cosmetic drug. He was speaking about Nexavar (sorafenib), a targeted oral chemotherapy capable of extending the lives of patients suffering from late stage kidney and liver cancer.
At the time, Bayer sold a 30 day supply of Nexavar in India for approximately ₹2.8 lakh ($5,400).
To put that number into perspective - in 2012, India’s annual per capita income was roughly ₹68,700. A cancer patient would have had to liquidate more than four years of their entire pre tax income just to buy a single month’s supply of pills. For 98% of Indian families, this was not a retail price tag; it was a signed death warrant.
Western pharmaceutical executives viewed this as the immutable cost of doing business. But within months, the price of that exact same medication plummeted…
