| Citation | Dr. Yusuf Hamied has combined knowledge of chemistry, activism and a deep humanitarianism to bring affordable drugs to neglected suffering populations. He is renowned for his pioneering work on anti-retrovirals. In 1996, triple drug combinations - highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) - were proving miraculous, converting HIV/AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic infection. But lifelong therapy with these drugs costing $12,000 per year was unaffordable in Africa, which was being ravaged by HIV/AIDS. Dr. Hamied's decision to manufacture HAART drugs and provide them at cost has saved nearly 20 million lives.
This astounding feat was possible because of a series of forward-looking, insightful, creative and courageous steps that Dr. Hamied had taken earlier. Trained as a chemist with a BA (First Class Honours) and PhD from the University of Cambridge (working in Lord Alexander Todd's laboratory), Dr. Hamied returned to India in 1960 to work at, and ultimately lead, CIPLA, a small firm that notably had supplied medicines to the British WWII war effort. In 1960, the Indian pharmaceutical industry was primitive, bound by archaic 1911 British patent laws, which Britain itself had abandoned in 1949. As a result, domestically, most drugs were either unavailable or unaffordable. Dr. Hamied banded together with others to form the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association and successfully led the effort to modify India's patent laws, which in 1970 were changed to protect manufacturing processes rather than compounds. Simultaneously, Dr. Hamied took on the difficult task of upgrading manufacturing to meet international regulatory standards, so as to allow CIPLA to be a player on the world pharmaceutical stage.
These hard-fought victories set the stage. Dr. Hamied and his chemists unleashed their creativity and designed new syntheses of patented drugs, providing generic versions at low cost. CIPLA synthesized all three HAART antiretrovirals and formulated them in the world's first triple-drug fixed dose combination tablet, costing $1 per day. This was a remarkable achievement, all the more so for being achieved by a (then) small Indian pharmaceutical company against the concerted opposition of Western pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Hamied's work has also saved the lives of millions of malaria sufferers. CIPLA developed fixed dose combinations of artesunate and mefloquine, which have been the mainstay of protection against the spread of resistant malaria in countries such as Myanmar and Cambodia, the epicentres of emerging drug resistance. Administering drugs to children is a difficult problem, and Dr. Hamied has developed effective, safe and palatable drug combinations for HIV/AIDS and malaria for children.
Having been a major innovator in India (where he today funds charitable efforts to foster in-country talent), Dr. Hamied is also committed to the transfer of advanced pharmaceutical technologies to other underprivileged nations. Most notably, CIPLA has set up a state-of-the-art WHO-approved facility in Uganda to manufacture drugs for HIV/AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases.
Throughout his life, Yusuf Hamied has lived his belief in the collective responsibility to alleviate human suffering. If we subscribe to Bertrand Russell's premise that a good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge, then Dr. Hamied has led a very good life indeed. |