-The Hindu Ranbaxy, one of India's largest pharmaceutical companies, has agreed to pay $500 million fines levied by U.S. authorities for selling adulterated Drugs and lying to federal regulators in a case that is part of an ongoing crackdown on the quality of generic Drugs flowing into the U.S. The deal struck on Monday, said to be the largest financial penalty against a generic drug company for violations of FDA standards, came...

-The Times of India Overuse of antibiotics has led to a situation in which even simple infections acquired outside the hospital are turning drug-resistant. This has been revealed in a recent study conducted by a city private hospital on ICU patients. It showed that nearly one-fourth of all admissions due to infection of the urinary tract, pneumonia or blood stream infection were community-acquired which means that these people contracted the drug-resistant...

-The Business Standard The Novartis verdict by the Supreme Court emphasised the importance of flexibilities in drug patent laws, in contrast to Western countries which are seeking TRIPS-plus hardening through free-trade agreements As curtains on the six-year-long legal tussle with Swiss drug giant Novartis AG finally came down earlier this month, the Indian government did not waste a second in hailing the Indian patent law which it said was in "full...

-The Hindu Business Line From maker of versions of drugs, India's pharmaceutical industry has turned a top innovator Twenty years ago, Ranbaxy was a home-spun drug-maker. The Indian Patents Act allowed companies to make chemically-similar versions of innovative drugs. Visionaries in the pharmaceutical sector, like Parvinder Singh (Ranbaxy's key architect and member of its promoter family) and Anji Reddy (founder of Dr Reddy's Laboratories), were alive. And the pharmaceutical industry did not have...

-The Hindu     Antibiotics are often used as an excuse for poor infection control Arjun (name changed) is an 8-year-old boy who was being treated for breathing difficulty in a hospital in one of the southern cities. He had suffered on and off with cough/cold since infancy and had been treated multiple times with antibiotics. His parents were not highly educated and hoped that he would get better as he grew older. This...