Cipla Medpro wins $173 million South African HIV drug contract
The order is the third that Cipla Medpro has won from South Africa's govt this year
Johannesburg: Cipla Medpro South Africa Ltd., the country’s third-biggest drugmaker, won a 2 billion-rand ($173 million) order to supply antiretroviral drugs for the next three years to the government’s anti-AIDS program.
The medication to combat HIV will be made at a plant in Kwazulu-Natal province under a contract that starts on 1 April, Cape Town-based Cipla Medpro said on Tuesday in a statement. The order is the third that the drugmaker has won from South Africa’s government this year, it said.
The company is a pioneer of fixed-dose combinations, and intends to “build on the foundation laid to continue our quest of providing affordable health care to all," Cipla Medpro chief executive officer Paul Miller said in the statement.
South Africa has the world’s biggest antiretroviral treatment program, offering medication to more than 2.2 million people. Use of the regimen has almost doubled since 2008 to cover about one-third of the 6.4 million people in the country who are infected with HIV, according to the Human Sciences Research Council. The government has a target of halving the number of new infections by 2016.
Cipla Medpro has been a unit of Mumbai-based Cipla Ltd. since the Indian partner acquired it for about $4.5 billion in 2013. Bloomberg
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