South Africa is in talks with Swiss pharmaceutical firm Roche to reduce the price of its breast cancer drug Herceptin, which currently costs 500,000 rand ($33,000) a year to treat one person and is unaffordable to most women, the health minister said on Tuesday. Africa's most industrialised country has a history of pushing to cut the prices of vital medicines, including winning concessions from big pharmaceutical firms to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) used to control the HIV virus. Recently the government started free vaccinations of young girls against the sexually acquired human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes about 70 percent of cervical cancers.
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South Africa seeks price cut for Roche’s Herceptin cancer drug