India's Aurobindo Pharma First Major Generic Drugmaker to Join UNITAID's Medicines Patent Pool

"India's Aurobindo Pharma has become the first major generic drugmaker to join" the Medicines Patent Pool, launched by the UNITAID health financing system and "designed to make HIV/AIDS treatments more widely available to the poor," Reuters reports. "The Medicines Patent Pool said on Tuesday the agreement would allow Aurobindo to make a range of AIDS drugs licensed to the pool by Gilead Sciences, the leading maker of HIV drugs, in July," according to the news service.

"Aurobindo has also elected to take advantage of a key provision in the pool's licenses in order to sell one drug, tenofovir, to a wide range of countries without paying royalties," Reuters writes, adding, "These could include several middle-income countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Ukraine and Uruguay" (Hirschler, 10/11).

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