-The Business Standard The tussle between the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) and Ranbaxy is likely to hit the plans of Indian pharmaceutical companies of making it big in the US generic drugs market. Apart from the fact that their image may take a beating, the additional scrutiny on abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) from India would lead to more delays in drug approvals. Last week, Ranbaxy had agreed to...

-The Hindu Mumbai: Unsafe abortions are killing a woman every two hours in this country, according to estimates and calculations correlating data on maternal mortality ratio (MMR) and Sample Registration System (SRS) data by Ipas, India, an international NGO working on increasing access to safe abortion services. The last nationwide MMR data giving details of causes of maternal deaths was in SRS 2001-03, said advisor, policy for Ipas India, Medha Gandhi. While...

-The Hindu     13 tribal children have died in Attappady of Palakkad district this year Palakkad: Kerala's claims to world fame for its high human development indices appear to be tottering with children in the tribal heartland of Attappady in Palakkad district dying of malnutrition. In the last 15 months, as many as 29 children died of malnutrition, 13 of them this year. Two more deaths were reported from the area over the past...

-The Hindu The lesson from the Supreme Court ruling on Gleevec is that pharmaceutical multinational corporations need to focus research on genuine innovations rather than on ways to evergreen their patents The much awaited Supreme Court judgment on Gleevec has been delivered. Novartis has failed in reversing the rejection of its patent. And, predictably - like a scratched record - there have been suggestions that pharma investments in India will dry...

-PTI A woman, who had alleged that she was raped and had consequently conceived, was allowed to abort the baby by the Delhi High Court which termed it as "extremely traumatic" and asked AIIMS to preserve the foetus for conducting DNA test. "To carry a child in her womb by a woman as a result of conception through an act of rape is extremely traumatic, humiliating and psychologically devastating," Justice S P...