Procuratorate drops charge against leukemia patient buying unapproved drug

A procuratorate in central China's Hunan Province dropped its charge against a leukemia patient who bought unapproved cancer drugs from abroad on Thursday.

In July, the Yuanjiang City procuratorate filed charges against Lu Yong for "disrupting management of credit cards" and "selling fake medication".

Any medication that has not been approved by Chinese authorities is classed as illegal.

The case was withdrawn on the grounds that Lu had not sought profit by buying the cheaper cancer drug from India, and his acts of buying credit cards online and providing one card to his Indian supplier were not considered crimes.

Lu, 46, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2002. The businessman had been prescribed Glivec, a patented drug made by a Swiss company, which cost 23,500 yuan (about 3,800 U.S. dollars) a month.

In 2004, Lu asked for help to buy Veenat, a much cheaper generic version of Glivec, made in India, which costs 4,000 yuan for a month's supply.

After he found the drug worked, he began to buy the medicine himself and even helped other patients he met online to purchase it. As more Chinese patients switched to Veenat, the price reduced to 200 yuan per bottle.

Lu Yong was caught by police in a crackdown on online credit card fraud in Yuanjiang City in 2013 and was prosecuted by judicial authorities last year. More than 100 leukemia patients wrote to the local procuratorate in protest.

Lu's case has brought the dilemma to the fore.

The patent for Glivec expired in 2013. Some Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises have produced generic substitutes but the price is still very high.

In 2012, more than 3 million people in China had cancer, a fifth of the world's total; deaths due to the disease reached 2.2 million in the same year, a quarter of the world's total.

"Many patients cannot afford imported cancer drugs and have to stop treatment. Hopefully, the government and society at large can help," a Beijing cancer doctor said.