US pharma CEO hikes drug's price by 5000%!

• Martin Shkreli is Big Pharma's biggest A**hole, screamed the Daily Beast.
• Meet the most despised man in the world, headlined an equally indignant Daily Mail.

The object of their ire, former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, the CEO of a US-based pharmaceutical company who jacked up the price of a WHO "essential medicine" by 5500%.

The drug that has brought 32-year-old Shkreli to the limelight is Daraprim, the lone USFDA approved treatment for a life-threatening parasitic infection - Toxoplasmosis - in babies and AIDS patients. 

Shkreli, founder and CEO of little-known Turing Pharmaceuticals, had acquired rights to market Daraprim (pyrimethamine) in the US for $55 million (around Rs 363 crore) in August. Last week, he shocked the world by raising the price of each Daraprim pill from $13.50 to a whopping $750.

A stubborn Shkreli justified the company's decision saying, "Our number one concern is ensuring that patients with toxoplasmosis have efficient and affordable access to Daraprim."

"Turing is a very small not a profitable company and for us to exist and maintain a profit is reasonable. Profits are a great thing to sustain corporate existence," he told Bloomberg.

Daraprim had already seen its price shoot up from $1 a pill in 2010 to $13.50 recently.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) wrote a letter to Turing earlier this month asking them to reconsider the price hike.

"Under the current pricing structure, it is estimated that the annual cost of treatment for toxoplasmosis, for the pyrimethamine component alone, will be $336000 for patients who weigh less than 60 kilograms and $634500 for patients who weigh more than 60 kilograms," the letter reads. "This cost is unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population in need of this medication and unsustainable for the health-care system."

Notwithstanding this appeal, came the whopping 50-fold rise in Daraprim's price!

Doctors treating patients with Toxoplasmosis explained Turing's move would now make patients opt for less effective medications that could actually delay the recovery.

Dr Aberg of Mount Sinai told the New York Times that some hospitals could now find Daraprim too expensive to keep in stock, possibly resulting in treatment delays. She said that Mount Sinai was continuing to use the drug, but each use now required a special review.

"This seems to be all profit-driven for somebody," Dr Aberg told the paper, "and I just think it's a very dangerous process."

Hillary Clinton, the possible Democrat nominee for US President, was among those outraged. She tweeted that "Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous" and vowed to lay out a plan for combating high drug prices.

It is estimated that up to half of the world's population is infected with toxoplasmosis, a rare disease which comes without symptoms and is generally transmitted orally.

In the United States about 23% are affected and in some areas of the world this is up to 95%.

However, treatment is often only recommended for people with serious health problems, such as people with HIV whose CD4 counts are under 200 cells per every cubic millimetre, because the disease is most serious when one's immune system is weak.