-Economic and Political Weekly While the Supreme Court decision in the recent Novartis case has cleared the way for production of generic drugs in India, doctors have to prescribe cheaper alternatives to costly brands if patients with limited means are to benefit. What is being hailed as a victory in the struggle for affordable medicines in the country will actually be one only when there is a pro-patient slant to the...
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2,644 died during clinical trial of drugs in 7 years: Govt to SC -Dhananjay Mahapatra
-The Times of India As many as 2,644 people, called subjects, died during the clinical trials of 475 new drugs on human beings in last seven years and only 17 of the medicines were approved for marketing in India, the Centre has informed the Supreme Court. Responding to allegations by NGO, Swasthya Adhikar Manch, in its PIL that Indians were used as guinea pigs by foreign pharmaceutical majors for human trial of...
More »Shortage of MTP pills, thanks to tighter norms of Food and Drug Administration -Pratibha Masand
-The Times of India MUMBAI: Bhavin Dave was married for six weeks when his wife realized she was pregnant. Both rushed to a doctor, who said the best way to deal with the unplanned pregnancy was to use a medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) drug. She prescribed the pills and that was when their ordeal began. Bhavin (name changed) scrambled from pharmacy to pharmacy with the prescription, but to no avail. He...
More »Most big patented drugs skip India -Rupali Mukherjee
-The Times of India Big pharma may be crying hoarse over India's "weak'' intellectual property environment, but over the past five years or so, they have introduced only a handful of their patented blockbusters in the country. That's not all. The contribution of patented drugs in the Rs 72,000-crore pharma retail market is not even 1%, indicating that multinationals have been traditionally slow and have a poor track record in introducing...
More »Patent justice-Sakthivel Selvaraj
-The Hindu Drug patents are designed to create profits that enable more research on diseases affecting millions. But in practice, they have often generated super profits for Big pharma companies while erecting access barriers for the poor. The Novartis case spotlights much that is wrong with the system. The rejection of the Novartis petition challenging one of the most progressive tenets of the Indian Patents Act (1970), as amended in 2005 by...
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