US HIV clinicians are being asked to join an “immediate and formal” boycott of the pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories by many of the US's leading HIV clinicians. The call is in reaction to the company’s 400% hike in the price of the protease inhibitor ritonavir.
In an open letter to a senior executive at Abbott 34 highly experienced US HIV clinicians call the Abbott price increase “outrageous behaviour” and call for doctors across the US to formally boycott Abbott products and events.
The HIV Healthcare providers’ boycott will consist of the following actions:
- Resigning from Abbott advisory boards and lecturer positions.
- Refusal to attend any Abbott-sponsored lectures or advisory meetings.
- Refusal to participate in any Abbott clinical trial.
- Continued prescribing of lopinavir/ritonavir or other ritonavir boosted protease inhibitors when this provides the best therapeutic option for a patient, but will actively consider other treatment options, where these are medically available.
- An extension of the boycott to include other products of Abbott. When other treatment options are available the use of Biaxin, Erythromycin PCE, Omnicef, Prevacid, Tricor, Depakote, Flumax, Hytrin, Mavik, OraQuick, Advera, Ensure, Glucerna, and Pulmocare is to be avoided.
Abbott representatives, both commercial and medical, are no longer welcome in their offices.
Other healthcare providers are being actively encouraged to join the boycott, which, the HIV doctors emphasise, is being undertaken “in the name of protecting our patients by protecting the entire healthcare system” and against a background of “strong ethical and philosophical objections” to Abbott’s corporate strategy.
Further information on this website
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