From the article:
At the turn of the millennium, multinational pharmaceutical companies were charging $10,000 per patient for a daily drug regimen that could keep those infected with HIV/AIDS alive. Those in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and elsewhere could access this cocktail only under limited circumstances. Then, in 2001, the Indian drug manufacturer Cipla Limited began producing versions of a triple antiretroviral drug cocktail for a mere $350. Cipla, in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), helped usher in a new era of global access to essential medicines—one that justified relaxing or even ignoring international patents and other property rights to produce and distribute an important and lifesaving drug as a generic.
Since that time, global health advocacy organizations have found increasingly sophisticated ways to work with multinationals in ensuring access to essential medicines for low- and middle-income countries. In the 2010s, the global health initiative Unitaid helped create a Medicines Patent Pool, in which pharmaceutical companies from all over the world offered antiretroviral drug licenses, thereby creating a path for developing generic versions so long as the patent holders received royalties. The mechanism supplied voluntary licenses to new producers even while protecting the legal rights of the drugs’ original manufacturers. Companies such as Gilead, for example, have supplied voluntary licenses for their antivirals directly to generic manufacturers, allowing for tiered pricing across countries.
