United States-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is calling on Gilead Sciences Inc, a United States-based biotechnology company, to establish a USD10bn victim compensation fund, it was reported yesterday.

The victim compensation fund is being arranged for patients harmed after taking the company's TDF (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) drugs as part of their treatment for HIV or AIDS or taken by uninfected individuals as part of the HIV prevention strategy called pre-exposure prophylaxis.

AHF's demand for a victim compensation fund from Gilead comes as HIV litigation attorneys announce its filing last Friday in Alameda County (Superior Court of California County of Alameda, Case # RG19026805) of a new personal injury lawsuit seeking to hold the company accountable for its actions around its failure to rectify a known defect in TDF's drug formulation. The lawsuit alleges Gilead knew that it had a safer version of tenofovir available – tenofovir alafenamide (TAF) – but shelved it in order to extend its profits from and monopoly of TDF. The newest lawsuit also alleges that Gilead failed to warn patients of the damaging side effects of TDF and actively misrepresented TDF's efficacy and risks knowing that TAF, the safer alternative, existed in its own laboratories.

The lawsuit filed on Friday against Gilead in Alameda County names 40 plaintiffs who have been injured from Gilead's TDF-based drugs.