Pretoria voids 12.63 billion rand in HIV contracts
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Businessday
The Pretoria High Court has invalidated two South African HIV medicine contracts worth a combined 12.63 billion rand, in a global tender worth 15.5 billion. The Health Department has 120 days to review suppliers and the allocation, Business Day reports.
The Pretoria High Court on Tuesday invalidated the two main contracts in a 15.5 billion rand tender to supply HIV treatments in South Africa. The contracts, worth a combined 12.63 billion rand, cover monthly and quarterly packs of tablets combining tenofovir, lamivudine and dolutegravir, according to Business Day.
Acting judge Graham Girdwood said laboratories Viatris and Innovata should have been excluded from the outset because they did not hold valid local manufacturing licences when bids closed. He also found that Cipla had been unfairly excluded, as the Health Department had applied a price rule 10% higher against it that had not been announced in the tender conditions.
The court gave the department 120 days to reconsider eligible bidders and review the allocation of the contracts. To prevent an interruption to treatment, it suspended the cancellation of the contracts for 90 days after the new allocation is finalised, Business Day reports.
Cipla Medpro and Hetero SA had separately challenged their exclusion from the two contracts before their cases were consolidated. The judgment also found that Barrs and Aurobindo had improperly been granted local manufacturer status and that the department had not verified declarations concerning ownership by historically disadvantaged people, according to Business Day. South Africa has about 8 million people living with HIV, of whom 5.7 million are on treatment, according to the latest Treasury data.
