-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 Hindu It cannot get any worse than this. Over three lakh newborns in India die on the very first day of their birth. With this the country ranks as number one in terms of first day of birth mortality; its share in global first-day deaths stands at 29 per cent. The appalling state of Indian health care to which this speaks is further highlighted by the fact that the...

-PTI WASHINGTON: Describing Aadhaar card as one of the best example of integration of technology for social welfare use, the World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, believes that this massive effort by the Indian Government would help in achieving his goal of poverty eradication by 2030. "On a larger scale we've got to think about how we can integrate this technology into a massive effort to scale up access to financial...

-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...