Cheap blindness drug Lucentis should be made widely available, says World Health Organisation

All countries should make available a cheap, unlicensed drug to prevent blindness in older people in preference to the expensive licensed version promoted by pharmaceutical companies, a World Health Organisation committee has ruled.

The WHO's essential medicines committee has rejected an application from Novartis to have the expensive licensed drug Lucentis added to the list of drugs all countries should stock.

The decision is a blow for the pharmaceutical companies that have been fighting the growing use of Avastin for age-related wet macular degeneration.

Avastin, primarily a bowel cancer drug, is similar to Lucentis but costs only one-fortieth as much when split into the tiny doses to be injected in the eye.

The two drugs are made by the same company, Genentech, owned by the Swiss giant Roche, which has declined to seek a licence for Avastin to prevent blindness. Novartis markets Lucentis in Europe.

Critics accuse the companies of blocking access to a cheap drug that could slow or prevent blindness in millions of people around the world. A head-to-head trial called Ivan, which was funded by the UK government, found that two years of Lucentis treatment cost over £18,500 (HK$226,000) compared with £3,000 for Avastin.