Translated in French by Oumar Diouck
Botswana has awarded a massive anti-retroviral drugs tender to a British company, ViiV Healthcare, a global specialist HIV company majority owned by GSK, with Pfizer Inc. and Shionogi Limited as shareholders.
ViiV Health said the tender is the largest tender ever secured by ViiV Healthcare in Africa without disclosing the value.
“As part of the agreement, ViiV Healthcare has committed to providing Dolutegravir 50mg. The medicine would be used as a first line core-agent to treat newly diagnosed patients tested under the program in Botswana.”
Dr. Dominique Limet, Chief Executive Officer at ViiV Healthcare, said the tender will help accelerate the company’s treatments in Africa.
“It is even more of an achievement for us as it happens less than three years after the product was first approved and less than one year after it was included in the WHO guidelines,” Dr. Limet said.
Recently, ViiV Healthcare announced extension of its licence agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool for the adult formulation of dolutegravir to include all lower middle-income countries, a number of which are on the African continent.
