Zydus jumped the gun to make its cancer drug affordable. It’s still not enough |
In India, a six-month regimen of Keytruda, a breakthrough cancer drug made by Merck, costs 80 months of a school teacher’s average salary. For the vast majority of patients in the country, that’s well-nigh unaffordable.
The hospitals and pharmacies they get the drug from, though, buy it for far less.
That discrepancy tells the story of how opaque cancer-drug pricing is in India. And it was put into stark relief earlier this year when Zydus launched Tishtha, a biosimilarSimilar version of an existing clinically approved complex drug, usually made by companies after the original........