The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it has added new curative treatments for liver disease hepatitis C to its list of essential medicines. The specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) also stated that prices of the drugs should be lowered so that they can be accessible to patients from poor countries.

The disease is caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and affects approximately 150 million people worldwide and becomes reason of deaths of about half a million every year. The treatment of the disease has been transformed by the arrival of some new drugs like Sovaldi of biotechnology company Gilead sciences.

The new drugs are found effective and can cure hepatitis C. But, the problem is they are out of reach at Western prices to the patients who belong to poor countries. As per the reports, a single Sovaldi pill costs $1,000 in the United States, which is a very high price for a patient of poor country.

Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director general of WHO, said, "While some efforts have been made to reduce their price for low-income countries, without uniform strategies to make these medicines more affordable globally the potential for public health gains will be reduced considerably".

Earlier, Foster City, California, headquartered Gilead Sciences cut its price for a number of poor countries. According to campaigners, there is need to do more to make sure that patients across the globe are able to access the drugs.

Model List of Essential Medicines of WHO has been used by governments of all countries to help determine what kind of treatments should be made available in their countries. The list by WHO is updated every two years. The latest version of the report was published on Friday, which included a number of new drugs for cancer and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.