Awards for R15.5bn HIV pill tender set aside
The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has set aside the awards for the daily HIV pill in a R15.5bn antiretroviral tender. The National Health Department has been ordered to reconsider the companies awarded ‘one of the largest and most significant tenders of its kind’, reports GroundUp.
The tender was split between various pharmaceutical companies. Local manufacturer Cipla Medpro Manufacturing, which has a strong track record of supplying drugs in the market, did not receive an award to provide the one-month or three-month packs, and only scored three smaller awards worth R215m.
Cipla, along with another unsuccessful bidder, Hetero Drugs SA, approached the court. Cipla wanted some of the tender awards to be set aside and Hetero wanted its own bid to be reconsidered.
In a judgment handed down this week, Acting Judge Graham Girdwood ruled that there had been several irregularities in the awards handed out for the one-month and three-month packs.
He set the awards aside, finding they were unlawful and unconstitutional, and directed the Department of Health to redo the split and award of the two items within 120 days.
In the meantime, current suppliers would keep delivering to avoid a drug shortage.
The setting-aside will also only take effect 90 days after the department finalises the new awards, so that current suppliers keep delivering until the companies chosen in the redone award are ready.
In terms of his order, the adjudication scores for the manufacturers not implicated in any irregularity would not be affected by the review of the ‘splits’ (to several companies) and overall awards.
The judge specifically ordered that the bids of Innovata Pharmaceuticals and Viatris Healthcare be excluded from reconsideration, because he found they had not qualified to pass the first stage of the bidding process.
He also said the final bid prices of Barrs Pharmaceuticals and Aurobindo Pharma had to be ‘restored to their pre-negotiation prices’ insofar as they did not qualify for local manufacturing preference, according to GroundUp.
He ordered that the scores of Innovata and Barrs be adjusted because they had been given historically disadvantaged individual (HDI) points without proving the ownership they claimed. Innovata and Barrs are subsidiaries of Avacare and went into business rescue in December 2025.
Days later, Barrs was out of stock of both items it was supposed to supply. They exited business rescue this year.
The judge ordered the department to conduct an investigation to determine if Innovata and Barrs had colluded in their bids.
Girdwood ordered the Minister and DG to pay Cipla’s costs.
Article disclaimer: While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article, it is not intended to provide final legal advice as facts and situations will differ from case to case, and therefore specific legal advice should be sought with a lawyer.
