Health Minister Adel Adawy inaugurated a factory that will produce Sovaldi, the drug for hepatitis C, in Sadat City on Sunday. He has instructed the Egyptian drug be as effective as the American one.
“This drug is the last hope for patients,” he said. “Make sure it is produced with quality or they will die.”
The minister also made sure the drug would not be duplicated on the market by giving it a secret code number on the label that only pharmacists would know. “We aim to attract more investments in medicine,” he said.
Adawy added that the factory will produce half a million packs a year. “This was agreed upon in the Sharm el-Sheikh Economic Conference,” he noted.
The World Health Organization has estimated that there are 15 million patients with hepatitis C in Egypt, which is more than 20 percent of the country's population.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
