Two generic HIV drugs removed from UN approved list

Monday, 13 February 2012

Two generic HIV drugs removed from UN approved list

Source: Rediff.com

17 June 2004 | EN

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has removed two generic HIV drugs made in India from its list of medicines approved for use by United Nations agencies. It is the first time that drugs have been dropped from the approved list in this way.

The drugs — lamivudine (3TC) and zidovudine (AZT) — were found to have inadequate paperwork to prove they were biologically equivalent to the patented drugs.

Cipla, the Indian pharmaceutical firm that makes the two drugs expects them to be back on the approved list within coming weeks. And a WHO official has stated that he doesn't expect the problem to interfere with the organisation's plans to treat three million, mostly African, people with HIV by next year.

Link to full Rediff.com news story

Add your comment

This is your network: share your views on any of our articles by adding your comments.

Comment

You need to be signed in to post a comment or to email a consenting comment author. Please sign in or sign up.

Email me when someone responds to the discussion

All comments are subject to approval and we reserve the right to edit comments containing inappropriate/unsuitable language. SciDev.Net holds copyright for all material posted on the website. Please see terms of use for further details.

All SciDev.Net material is free to reproduce providing that the source and author are appropriately credited. For further details see Creative Commons.

Back to News
To the top