Searching for Sovaldi: Buying Generic Sofosbuvir in India: A Hepatitis C Survivor's Journal

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This is the story of one man’s journey to cure himself of Hepatitis C, a debilitating and often fatal disease. It is a journey that begins with his own quest for a cure and ends with him assisting hundreds of others to access the same cure. Originally written as a guide to buying generic antiviral drugs in India it is an entertaining, frightening and uplifting journey that takes the reader into the murky world of the international pharmaceutical industry where profits are more important than people’s lives. The author’s journey ultimately brought hope to thousands of people suffering from the global epidemic of Hepatitis C and helped in the global effort to put pressure on governments and pharmaceutical companies to make new generation medicines available to their citizens at affordable prices. Diagnosed with Hep C after suddenly experiencing extreme, unexplained fatigue the author was faced with the prospect that he either had liver cancer or extreme cirrhosis of the liver. He was offered a treatment that included a cocktail of drugs based on Interferon. However after researching the Interferon therapy he found that it offered a cure rate of not much better than 50% and side effects that were so bad that up to half the people who started the treatment quit, preferring to risk liver cancer than endure the horrendous side effects of Interferon.The author instead decided to manage his disease through life style and dietary changes while waiting for the arrival of a new generation of anti-viral drugs that were rumoured to be on the horizon.However when the new drugs did eventually become available, Gilead’s Sofosbuvir, offering a 99% cure rate and almost no side effects, the price asked for them was an extraordinary US$1,000 per tablet. The average treatment would require between 84 and 168 tablets, or between US$84,000 and US$168,000 per treatment. All around the world the more than 150 million people suffering from Hepatitis C saw their cure a