People living with hepatitis C, access to medicines activists, and the medical community around the world “mark” the fifth birthday of the first all-oral, one dose per day cure sofosbuvir (Sovaldi®), launched by Gilead Sciences. A global hepatitis C coalition has released a fact sheet revealing treatment barriers that resulted in only 1.85 million of the 71 million people worldwide who need treatment, receiving Gilead’s sofosbuvir-based drugs, largely due to pricing, patents and registration delays.

Since 2013, Gilead reaped US$58.6 billion in hepatitis C product sales, of which 25.8 billion are estimated profit¹, with a fraction of these earnings invested in research and development. Instead, in 2017 alone, Gilead spent US$14.8 billion rewarding shareholders. This amount is more than sufficient to treat everyone with chronic hepatitis C with generic versions.

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