Thailand to buy generic Plavix drug from India

Thailand is ordering 2 million doses of generic Plavix from India after failing to win large enough discounts for the blood-thinner made by Bristol-Myers-Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis SA.

As many as four Indian drugmakers are vying for the contract, Vichai Chokevivat, chairman of the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (Thailand), told reporters in Bangkok today.

The supplies would help to meet Thailand's demand for between 4 million and 5 million Plavix tablets a year and cut the cost of treating the country's poorest heart-disease patients, he said.

The state-run drugmaker, which had initially sought 500,000 doses of generic Plavix, or clopidogrel, is expected to pay between 5 baht (16 US cents) and 5.50 baht for the pills, Vichai said.

Paris-based Sanofi offered to sell Plavix at 27 baht a tablet, with an added incentive of supplying 3.4 million tablets for the same cost as 1 million, Thailand's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Director-General Siriwat Thiptharadol said on June 6.

Plavix, the world's third-best selling drug, with $6.1 billion in 2006 revenues, is protected by a patent. Thailand is using a World Trade Organisation provision that allows governments to permit generic-drug production without the patent owners' consent in some cases.

Thailand is already buying copies of the AIDS drug efavirenz, marketed as Stocrin by Merck & Co and as Sustiva by Bristol-Myers, from an Indian unit of Mylan Laboratories.

Thailand says copying the drugs will allow the government to provide free medicine to a larger share of the country's poorest citizens, including its 220,000 HIV sufferers.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug industry trade group, says issuing so-called compulsory licences removes the incentive for companies to invest in research, and its members would retaliate by not introducing new drugs in Thailand.