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Thai antiretroviral HIV drug endorsed by WHO

By The Nation

 

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The Government Pharmaceutical Organisation's antiretroviral HIV drug has been endorsed by the World Health Organisation.

 

Sophon Mekthon, chairman of the GPO board of directors, said Efavirenz 600mg was put on the WHO prequalified list of HIV drugs in August.

 

This means Efavirenz has been certified as safe and effective and international organisations of the UN, such as Global Fund and UNICEF, can buy the drug.

 

Sophon said the Efavirenz is the first Thai antiretroviral drug and the first in Asean that has been put on the WHO prequalified list.

 

He said the Efavirenze is necessary for people with HIV as it is the first line regimen drug prescribed once a person has tested HIV positive.

 

Sophon added that some 80,000 people with HIV in Thailand are using Efavirenz 600mg to thwart health complications once their immune system deteriorates.

 

He added that the GPO drug could be a more affordable HIV drug for other Asean nations.

 

Sophon said the GPO is now in the process of registering a drug patent for Efavirenz to be exported to the Philippines. He expects that the Philippines will move forward with an order of the drug worth Bt50 million.

 

Mukdawan Prakobwaithayakij, deputy director of the GPO, said the organisation has been developing Efavirenz for 16 years before it was certified by the WHO to have the same standard of quality as the original drug.

 

Mukdawan said the imported drug sold for over Bt1,000 per bottle but now the price has dropped to Bt180 per bottle.

 

She said Efavirenz was made at the GPO drug manufacturing plant Phrase 1 in enough quantity for use in Thailand and for export.

 

This year, the GPO produced 42 million tablets of Efavirenz 600mg, which is just 2.5 per cent of the production capacity of all GPO sites that have combined capacity of 4 billion tablets.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30357805

 

 
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-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-11-03
Posted
1 hour ago, Sheryl said:

To be clear this is not a new drug at all nor was it invented in Thailand.

What is new and has been quality certified is a Thai generic brand of an existing HIV med.

Sent from my SM-J701F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app
 

Thank you for clarifying that.  I , mistakenly thought Thailand had made a new drug. 

Posted

According to another newspaper, it has taken Thai experts 16 years to work out how to make a generic version of an existing drug.

 

That said, this version is far cheaper, and is to be welcomed.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Posted

Problem here is that what they have produced may be correct - but I fear like the rabies vaccine, someone will substitute sugar powder for anti-retro virals and there be further worsening of the patients condition. 

Posted
4 hours ago, Sheryl said:

To be clear this is not a new drug at all nor was it invented in Thailand.

What is new and has been quality certified is a Thai generic brand of an existing HIV med.

Sent from my SM-J701F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app
 

Quote

Efavirenz, formerly known by the codename DMP 266, was developed by Du Pont Pharma. It was approved for HIV treatment in the United States in 1998, and the European licence was granted in May 1999.

Source http://www.aidsmap.com/resources/treatmentsdirectory/drugs/Efavirenz-iSustivai/page/1730999/

Why do we see these types of reports that give the impression that it was a Thai invention?

  • Thanks 1
Posted (edited)

This is good news for the drug companies who have been making a fortune out of the "perfect storm" of an incurable epidemic for half a century. But bad news for those patients and taxpayers footing the bill for the failure to prioritise prevention over treatment. 

 

There is a cheap and effective means of preventing the majority of new infections across the world, which happen to be among men who have sex with men (MSM) - the humble condom.

 

According to the international HIV/AID watchdog body Avert, men who have sex with men 28 times more at risk of HIV compared with the general population.  (https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-social-issues/key-affected-populations/men-sex-men)

 

It seems an awful lot of gay and bi men are deaf to the life-saving propaganda pumped out by their governments and health professionals. Either that or they are just too dumb to take the easiest, least costly precaution against becoming infected and passing on the deadly virus to others.

Edited by Krataiboy
  • Sad 1
Posted
11 hours ago, Krataiboy said:

This is good news for the drug companies who have been making a fortune out of the "perfect storm" of an incurable epidemic for half a century. But bad news for those patients and taxpayers footing the bill for the failure to prioritise prevention over treatment. 

 

There is a cheap and effective means of preventing the majority of new infections across the world, which happen to be among men who have sex with men (MSM) - the humble condom.

 

According to the international HIV/AID watchdog body Avert, men who have sex with men 28 times more at risk of HIV compared with the general population.  (https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-social-issues/key-affected-populations/men-sex-men)

 

It seems an awful lot of gay and bi men are deaf to the life-saving propaganda pumped out by their governments and health professionals. Either that or they are just too dumb to take the easiest, least costly precaution against becoming infected and passing on the deadly virus to others.

only gay and bi man??????

Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, rickthailand said:

only gay and bi man??????

No, of course not. Trans women are another emerging high-risk group. But gays and bisexuals remain by far the most vulnerable. Of the roughly 16,000 Americans who die of AIDS each year, more than half are MSM. In Europe, 57 percent of new cases of HIV last year were transmitted by men having sex with men and trans women.

 

Many bi and some homosexual men also, of course, have female partners or wives and visit women sex workers, which results in additional, below-the-line infections.

 

Unfortunately, no amount of money lavished on prevention campaigns and treatment (the US federal HIV budget alone is over $32 billion) has managed to turn the tide of MSM-spread infection, which disproportionately inflates HIV-AIDS figures worldwide.

 

The MSM community's tendency to dice with death or a semi-invalid life on expensive drugs rather than take the simplest of precautions is baffling to those professionals fighting this deadly disease  (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4034619/) - particularly in view of the highly-effective campaign launched in the Seventies by Thailand's 'Mr Condom', Mechai Viravaidya. 

 

His success in promoting the  use of condoms (or "mechais" as they became known here) not only slashed domestic HIV infection rates dramatically, but also helped reduce the average number of children in Thai families from seven to 1.5.
 
 
 
Edited by Krataiboy
Posted
On ‎11‎/‎4‎/‎2018 at 4:59 AM, Krataiboy said:

 

 

Unfortunately, no amount of money lavished on prevention campaigns and treatment (the US federal HIV budget alone is over $32 billion) has managed to turn the tide of MSM-spread infection, which disproportionately inflates HIV-AIDS figures worldwide.

 

 

 
 
 

Sorry, you're wrong here. It is now proven that PLHIV on ARV's with a <20cpml viral load cannot transmit the virus to anyone else. It's also now further understood that while the protection isn't 100% (about 86% in studies) those people on PrEP medication are extremely unlikely to contract the virus. In Scotland where there has been a wide scale trial of PrEP being given to the MSM community the number of new infections of people in the trial is zero. In London where the use of PrEP isn't yet government backed but many in the MSM community have procured the medication privately the year on year HIV infection rate for the MSM community last year dropped by 42%.

Posted (edited)

Source, please.

 

And how do you account for the fact that the vast majority of new HIV infections in the US and across the West are caused by MSM?

 

Gay and bisexual men are the population most affected by HIV in the United States. In 2016, gay and bisexual men accounted for 67% of the 40,324 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and six dependent areas. 

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/index.html

 

 

 

Edited by Krataiboy
Posted
On 11/3/2018 at 4:08 PM, saminoz said:

I was confused as well as, last year I think, didn't they report that Thailand had developed the cure for HIV and then cancer?!!

You missed Ebola.

Posted
32 minutes ago, Krataiboy said:

In 2016, gay and bisexual men accounted for 67% of the 40,324 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and six dependent areas. 

 

Gay and bisexual men are far more likely to be tested for HIV than breeders.

 

The fact that there is such a high proportion of gay men amongst new diagnoses shows that gay men are generally acting responsibly with respect to testing.

 

This does not equate to your unfounded slur of "the vast majority of new HIV infections in the US and across the West are caused by MSM".

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

Gay and bisexual men are far more likely to be tested for HIV than breeders.

 

Breeders? Presumably, your denigratory expression to describe the vast majority of the population upon which our species relies for its survival (not forgetting your own mother and father) is sourced from the same ludicrous LBGTQ...XYZ lexicon which proffers such absurdities as "chest feeding" as a substitute for breast feeding and "snowpersons" for snowmen. 

 

Unfortunately, in addition to harming one another by their irresponsible behavior, many gay and bi men pass HIV and other serious and exotic sexually transmitted diseases to women partners, wives and sex workers, creating yet another, subterranean, pool of infection which is hard to quantify but nevertheless very real.

 

The fact that there is such a high proportion of gay men amongst new diagnoses shows that gay men are generally acting responsibly with respect to testing.

 

If more gay and bi men acted responsibly in the first place, for example by taking elementary precautions during their high-risk sexual escapades, there would be no need to keep trotting along to the GU clinic to see if they had picked up something nasty or potentially life-threatening. Prevention is always better, and less costly in human and financial terms, than cure.

 

Unfortunately, there is, however, considerable evidence to show that a substantial proportion of MSM participants seem to enjoy the perverse thrill of playing a sexual version of Russian roulette - with disastrous consequences starkly evident in the HIV figures from reliable sources such as Avert.

 

This does not equate to your unfounded slur of "the vast majority of new HIV infections in the US and across the West are caused by MSM".

 

It is not a "slur" to state that the majority of new HIV infections are passed on through MSM. It is a fact, no matter how much it may offend your feelings to learn it. To repeat, the Centre for Disease Control in the US reported:  "In 2016, gay and bisexual men accounted for 67% of the 40,324 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and 6 dependent areas".

 

Fortunately, no condom has yet been invented to protect you, or anyone else for that matter, from the truth, adroitly summed up by Patrick William Kelly, author of a new global history of AIDS.

 

Writing in the New York Post, he observes: "The nonchalant dismissal of the condom today flies in the face of the very culture of sexual health that gay men and lesbians constructed in the 1980s. If a hyper-resistant strand of another life-threatening S.T.I. develops, we will rue the day that we forgot the searing legacies of our past.

 

He adds:"We might also recognize that PrEP has not proved nearly as effective a prevention strategy for women as it has for men, and that some strains of HIV. have developed resistance to the drug".

 

Forewarned, hopefully, is forearmed.

 

Edited by Krataiboy
Posted
8 hours ago, Krataiboy said:

Source, please.

 

And how do you account for the fact that the vast majority of new HIV infections in the US and across the West are caused by MSM?

 

Gay and bisexual men are the population most affected by HIV in the United States. In 2016, gay and bisexual men accounted for 67% of the 40,324 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and six dependent areas. 

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/index.html

 

 

 

Undetectable viral load = no transmission of HIV - PARTNER and PARTNER2 studies, see - http://i-base.info/htb/34604

 

London infection rate YoY drop 42% - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hiv-wiped-out-london-doctors-drop-infections-aids-virus-defeated-dean-street-san-francisco-early-a7522241.html

 

PrEP in Scotland and in general. The US CDC actually states its efficacy as 90% -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-39552641

 

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/prep.html

 

Continuing high rates of infection amongst the MSM community is mainly down to the fact that the use of PrEP is not standardised or fully supported yet across whole countries, states etc but has only really been trialled in relatively small groups. Where it is properly trialled and measured though there is no doubt as to its effectiveness.

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