Oral GLP-1 Pills and the Diabetes Treatment Gap in the Global South
Locally manufactured oral semaglutide costs about $18 for a 30-day supply, according to Al Jazeera. Eli Lilly's Mounjaro, by comparison, costs about $500 for a month's supply in the United States. The figures sit at the centre of a report on whether once-daily pills could narrow the diabetes treatment gap in the Global South, a term generally used for lower- and middle-income countries.
The drugs at issue belong to a class called GLP-1 drugs, short for glucagon-like peptide-1. The first FDA-approved drug of this kind, exenatide, reached the market in 2005. The FDA is the US Food and Drug Administration, the agency that approves medicines for sale in the United States. Liraglutide, another GLP-1 drug, followed in 2009.
Many of the best-known versions are given by injection. Ozempic and Wegovy are semaglutide injections taken once a week, and Mounjaro is a tirzepatide injection taken once a week. GLP-1 oral pills are typically taken once a day, while GLP-1 injections are taken once per week.
Prices differ sharply from country to country. Mounjaro costs about 199 pounds ($264) in the UK and 1,261 riyals ($336) in Saudi Arabia. In India, locally manufactured Mounjaro is available at 14,766 rupees ($157). In Pakistan, imported Mounjaro costs 220,000 rupees ($723), while locally manufactured tirzepatide from Getz Pharma costs 17,000 rupees ($61).
The report also sets these prices against the scale of diabetes itself. One in nine people in the world between the ages of 20 and 79 lives with diabetes, and one in eight people globally is obese. Pakistan has the highest diabetes prevalence in the world, at 31.4 percent, measured as the share of people living with the condition.
Other countries with high figures include the Marshall Islands at 25.7 percent, Kuwait at 25.6 percent, Samoa at 25.4 percent, Qatar and Kiribati at 24.6 percent each, Saudi Arabia at 23.1 percent, French Polynesia at 22.8 percent, Egypt at 22.4 percent and Bahrain at 22.1 percent.
