Buyer’s clubs have played an important role in solving access to medicine challenges in many countries around the world over many years. The Hollywood film, Dallas Buyer’s Club, was a fictionalised account of the buyer’s clubs which sprung up in the 80s and 90s in response to the lack of access to HIV treatment.

In recent years, buyer’s clubs have been created in response to the lack of access to medicines due to excessive pricing or monopoly exploitation from patent holders. The high prices of many patented medicines have resulted in lack of access in many countries. In the UK the NHS rationed access to the transformative, curative hepatitis C medicine, sofosbuvir due to the high price. It also fought a court battle to avoid responsibility for providing access to the HIV preventative medicine, PrEP, due to the anticipated cost. In both cases quality-assured generic versions of the drug were available in other countries for a small fraction of the price of the patented medicine.

Buyer’s clubs enable patients to understand their right to procure these more affordable versions of the drug, providing information that allows them to buy the medicine they need. In some cases they help patients to club together and secure a discounted price.

Many hundreds of UK patients have been cured of hepatitis C using generic versions of sofosbuvir bought through online buyer’s clubs, and every week thousands of UK citizens took generic PrEP to protect themselves from HIV using pills bought through buyer’s clubs, until routine NHS funding.

CF families travelled to Argentina to buy CFTR modulators that helped to treat their condition, before NHS funding of the branded products came into force in the UK in November 2019. Watch our story on BBC Newsnight here.

The hepatitis C buyers club can be found at fixhepc.com and the PrEP buyers club is at iwantprepnow.com

We have started talks with manufacturers who are already producing generic versions of ivacaftor, lumacaftor+ivacaftor and tezacaftor+ivacaftor. We are working with them to secure a stable supply of medicines to people with Cystic Fibrosis around the world.

It is the aim of the CF Buyers Club to link potential buyers with the manufacturer or their designated pharmacy.

It is important to understand that you will not purchase the medicines from the Buyers Club. You will purchase directly from the generic manufacturer or their designated pharmacy.  

For more information please email: info@cfbuyersclub.org