Aspen Pharmacare on Monday issued a statement welcoming reports that South Africa’s Competition Commission had agreed to take up a request from the country’s official opposition to investigate alleged anticompetitive conduct by the company.
The South African pharmaceutical company said it welcomed “the process and the opportunity to categorically set aside such allegations of anticompetitive behaviour”, and promised to cooperate fully with any investigation.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) said last week it would call on the country’s Competition Commission and Medicines Control Council to investigate reports in the UK and locally that staff at Aspen had conspired to dispose of medicine in order to boost prices across Europe. The reports alleged that this campaign had seen prices of some life-saving cancer treatments inflated by more than 1 000%.
“The price rises meant that the cost of Busulfan, used by leukaemia patients, rose from £5.20 to £65.22 a pack in England and Wales during 2013, an increase of more than 1 100%,” one report alleged. “The prices of chlorambucil, also used to treat blood cancer, rose from £8.36 to £40.51 a pack in the same year.”
The DA’s Wilmot James, spokesperson on health, said the reports appeared to show an effort “to manipulate the market for drugs” that would put them “out of reach for many, if not most” people. James urged the two bodies to look into whether similar tactics were being used in South Africa.
He added that the World Bank had already noted that the South African pharmaceutical industry was controlled by cartels and operated in an uncompetitive manner.
The DA on Sunday welcomed the Competition Commission’s decision to investigate Aspen.
“If these allegations are true and seriously ill patients have been exploited for financial gains, those responsible must be held accountable,” the DA said in a statement.
Aspen on Monday added that it was “worth noting that pharmaceutical prices are approved by the Department of Health in terms of the Single Exit Price regulatory framework, which establishes a universal fixed price for each pharmaceutical product”.
The company said it had not increased pricing of its products outside of this regulatory framework.