A special medical team from Delhi is scheduled to arrive in Gujarat in a day or two to study the cause of death of four children after they were given oral vaccines for measles in Adipur-Kutch on Wednesday. An official spokesman of the State government said Foods and Drugs Division officials had collected samples of the same vaccines from other major centres in the State including Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot and...

India faces the challenge of inappropriate use of antibiotics while Bharat copes with poor access to treatment, resulting in a policy conundrum and inaction. India was recently in the news for the wrong reasons. The serious threat posed by the newly discovered microbe, NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo--lactamase-1), resistant to many antibiotics, triggered alarm and panic. Predictions that the country will not meet the millennium development goal for child mortality caused dismay....

The government today said multi national companies (MNCs) are campaigning against domestic pharma industry as their interests were getting impacted due to increasing global presence of Indian firms in the generic segment. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jyotiraditya Scindia said: "A concerted campaign against India pharma industry has been launched by MNCs whose interests are getting adversely impacted due to increasing...

The 3 PSUs had complied with the good manufacturing practice norms Closure decision was based on misinterpreted signals from WHO Taking a critical view of the manner in which the manufacturing licences of three public-sector vaccine producing units were suspended, a Parliamentary panel has said it was abundantly clear that the decision was based on a major misconception and due to the misinterpretation of certain unclear signals in the communication from the...

Patients battling cancer, infections and mental illness joined a rally here today beseeching the government to reject a trade pact with the European Union that they fear will threaten the availability of inexpensive generic medicines in India. An estimated 2,000 people, many among them infected with HIV, walked along Delhi’s Parliament Street on a day when Indian and EU officials were negotiating a free trade agreement in Brussels. Health activists and lawyers...