The pharmaceutical company behind injectable weight loss drugs has been accused of putting profits before the health of people in developing countries by halting production of its insulin pens.
People with type 1 diabetes who rely on the human insulin produced by Novo Nordisk will instead receive glass vials and syringes – which they say are uncomfortable and more difficult to use with the same accuracy.
Novo Nordisk has told governments and nonprofits that it will no longer produce human insulin in pens and has already stopped supplying it in South Africa, where patients had to switch to glass vials.
Campaigners claim the move is aimed at scaling up production of injectable weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy.
Novo Nordisk this year announced a $4 billion (£3 billion) investment in a manufacturing plant in the US to “increase the ability to produce current and future injectable treatments for people with obesity and other serious chronic diseases”.
Lecritia Roberts, 31, from South Africa, has type 1 diabetes. She said it feels like the clock on treatment has been turned back.
“It makes me angry. They don’t understand how much harder they make our lives,” she said. “Why do they make it easier for people who want to lose weight than for people who are struggling with an illness?”
Roberts used vials to inject insulin as a teenager, but said it was difficult to administer accurately, was often embarrassing in public and required a lot of caution because dropping the vials could cause you to suddenly would lose a month’s worth of medications.
She said the pens changed the way she managed her diabetes because they were easier to carry and could be used discreetly, even when she was at her desk at work.
“When I was younger it was a challenge, I didn’t like injecting. Sometimes I would inject it into the floor because I didn’t like having the needle in my arms or thighs,” Roberts said. “If you break the bottle and don’t have it (stored) back, you basically have no insulin unless you buy it, but people in rural areas can’t afford it.”
She said she recently saw a blind diabetic patient in the hospital who had to learn how to use the vials and feared for her: the clicking sound of a pen helps visually impaired people measure the dosage.
A study by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and T1International, which campaigns for people with type 1 diabetes, shows that that 82% of patients preferred pens to syringes and vials.
Novo Nordisk will continue to produce analogue insulin pens – synthetic substances that are more expensive than human insulin, putting them out of the budget for many in developing countries.
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Candice Sehoma, advocacy advisor for Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign, said Novo Nordisk’s decision would lead to inequitable care around the world, pointing out that syringes and vials are outdated and rarely used in wealthy countries.
“While the company benefits enormously by supplying newer, more expensive insulin and semaglutide pens (Ozempic and Wegovy) to wealthier countries, the decision to withdraw human insulin pens from the market could leave people with diabetes in a resource-constrained environment who rely on insulin to survive, to return to using vials and syringes, which virtually no one uses anymore in high-income countries,” she said.
Novo Nordisk denied that discontinuing insulin pens would make way for the production of slimming drug pens, saying a different type of device was being used. A spokesperson said it is phasing out products to address “capacity constraints.”
“Patients in a number of countries, including South Africa, will ultimately have limited access to our human insulin in pens,” the spokesperson said.
“We recognize the impact these decisions will have on patients and we are in dialogue with local health authorities to ensure patients continue to have access to the treatment they need. We will continue to supply our newer insulins in pens.”
The scientists who discovered insulin transferred the patent to the University of Toronto to ensure its accessibility, but today more than 90% of the drug’s production is in the hands of three companies. The same companies are producing the new weight-loss drugs, initially developed to treat diabetes, and have been accused of having a “stranglehold” on that market, charging up to 400 times more than necessary for products.
Doctors Without Borders has called on other insulin manufacturers to guarantee lower prices for all types of devices, which it says could still be profitable at $1 per pen.
“The profiteering of a life-saving medicine that has been available for more than a century must stop now,” Sehoma said.