FDA Approves a Cheap Generic of the Twice-a-Year HIV-Prevention Shot, Expected to Cost $40 a Year in 120 Countries
The generic version of lenacapavir — the world's only twice-a-year HIV-prevention shot — is expected to cost $40 a person a year in 120 low- and middle-income countries, the AP reported Monday; it will not be sold in the US, where the brand-name version is still patent-protected.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a generic version of the world's only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV, the Associated Press reported Monday — a big step toward making the extremely effective drug available inexpensively and quickly in 120 low- and middle-income countries.
The drug, lenacapavir, is expected to cost $40 a person each year in those places, the same price as the daily preventive pills available now, according to the AP. But the shots are much more convenient than the pills because they are needed much less frequently — twice a year instead of every day.
The generic will not be available in the United States because a brand-name version is still protected by a patent, the AP reported.
For public-health workers, the approval takes a prevention tool that had been priced for wealthy health systems and puts it, at pill price, within reach of the countries carrying the heaviest HIV burden.
