This Indian Scientist challenged the major drug companies making medicines more affordable. Meet Yusuf Hamied, the president of the pharmaceutical company Cipla changed history in India, and made the brand that came to be known as a humanitarian pharmaceutical company, as he always stated that he “does not want to make money from diseases that crumble the world”.
Yusuf Hamied grew up in Mumbai and studied at Cathedral John Connon School and Saint Xavier’s College. At 18, he joined Cambridge, earning a PhD in chemistry in 1960 under Nobel laureate Alexander Todd.
After his studies, he joined Cipla, his father’s pharmaceutical company. Despite being the founder’s son, he started as an ordinary employee and did not receive any salary for a year.
In the beginning, Yusuf Hamied focused on making active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), making Cipla the first Indian company self-sufficient in drug manufacturing.
In the late 1960s, Yusuf Hamied played a key role in developing over 30 bulk drug formulations. In 1972, he and his brother Mustafa took over Cipla after their father’s death. Hamied became Managing Director in 1976 and Chairman in 1989. His leadership contributed significantly to Cipla’s success and prominence in the pharmaceutical industry.
Cipla managed to combine three anti-virals into one medication and they were selling it for less than one dollar a day in 2001 (the cost became lower still later on), while in the USA the treatment cost between 15,000 to 20,000 dollars a year (between 41 and 54 a day).
Under Dr Hamied’s leadership, Cipla burst onto the global pharma scene in 2001 making Triomune (first-line anti-retroviral therapy for AIDS) available at less than $1 per patient per day.
With him as president, the company developed numerous other medications for cardiovascular illnesses, diabetes, arthritis, and more, but there is no doubt that it was the product to combat HIV that brought him worldwide fame, and also the fact that the company exported it all over Africa and to third world countries, which had been neglected until then.
Yusuf Hamied was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian honour by the Government of India in 2005.
Hamied was awarded the ‘CNN-IBN Indian of the Year’ in the category of business by CNN-IBN in 2012 “for taking on multinational pharma companies and making some of the essential drugs more affordable to the masses in the developing countries.”
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