Green Cross Pharmacy teams up with PrEP Advocate Rodney Ellis to cut the price of PrEP
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Working with a Australian PrEP activist, Rodney Ellis, Green Cross Pharmacy, have relaunched their direct service, removed the middleman, Dynamix International, and substantially reduced the cost of PrEP online. The relaunched direct service includes the coupon scheme funded by sales of PrEP which continues to provide PrEP free to those who need it most. Green Cross Pharmacy currently deliver to the UK, Australia,Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland and Israel.
The new link to the site is www.GreenCrossPharmacy.online .
Noel Offer from Green Cross Pharmacy added, “I’m really pleased to be working again with Rodney Ellis to get PrEP into the hands of people. I’ve never been interested in making money out of this and the reputation of my business and the community service we provide is my driving force. My customers, and especially my PrEP customers, have always come first.”
Noel and Rodney were dismayed at the recent jump in prices and wanted to work together to build a solution that means PrEP is accessible to as many people as possible, at the lowest price possible..
Rodney Ellis, PrEP advocate and previous founding member of Australian community group PrEPaccessNOW, said “There have been increased prices for a while and I became alarmed when people were saying they could no longer afford PrEP. On 23rd March I asked Phil Joffe why the system that we’d built for Green Cross was so much more expensive and rebranded as Dynamix. He told me that Dynamix was a private profiting business and he was a shareholder.”
PrEp users using Dynamix International have been buying marked-up PrEP, with former PrEPaccessNow member and signatory to VAC’s PrEP Accord, Phil Joffe, openly admitting to profiting from sales of the HIV prevention medication.
“While it's really disappointing that someone has put money in their own pocket at the literal expense of PrEP users, the bright side is that Green Cross Pharmacy are back and the prices are back down. I’ll continue working with Noel and Green Cross Pharmacy to see what other overheads we can reduce. Each dollar off the price puts it in another band of customers’ reach.”
Green Cross Pharmacy will continue to offer free PrEP coupons to people on low incomes. Every ten sales generates one free donated coupon. On current sales and estimates it will generate about 10 coupons a day or the equivalent of 900 people “Trial” places.
Rodney said, “The coupon scheme is entirely self funded, not reliant on a government hand-out or the political will of the government of the day. Ultimately this is the gay community providing for its own through the facilities of Green Cross Pharmacy. It will scale up automatically as more people buy PrEP. We’ve managed to get about a 30% reduction in price while including those who would normally not be able to afford PrEP. Where there are “Trials” it’s an important community back-up plan in case they are ever taken away.”
Rodney Ellis has stated that, “In this collaboration there will be no middleman overheads. Not a cent will go into my own pocket as it was when we first set this up. The 30-45% drop in HIV sero conversion rates we are seeing from PrEP has always been the goal. I’m pleased we are back on track”
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As an indication, pricing at 05/05/2017 from Dynamix International for the generic PrEP 90 pill pack with delivery to Melbourne is about $211.23 AUD, with Green Cross Pharmacy the exact same product and package would cost $147.88 AUD, delivery included. That’s about a 3 month supply and represents a 30% reduction in the cost of a typical PrEP package.
