-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government may introduce a health cess to fund free health care services and launch seven preventive campaigns to curb illnesses under a draft health policy unveiled today. Some analysts, however, said the draft of the National Health Policy 2015 lacked emphasis on regulating India's private health industry, necessary to curb the high cost of health care. The draft says the government has the "political will" to...

-The Hindu In a significant development for the pharmaceutical industry, the Supreme Court has rejected multinational Bayer's appeal to block production and sales of the low cost version of its kidney cancer drug, sorafenib tosylate (branded as Nexavar), by Natco Pharmaceuticals. Hyderabad-based Natco was granted the first and to date only compulsory licence (CL) by the government in 2012 to make and sell a patented drug at a fraction of the...

-The Indian Express The World Universal Health Coverage Day, observed on December 12, builds on growing global momentum towards introducing universal health coverage (UHC) in national health plans and reinforces the case for including UHC as a prominent sustainable development goal to be adopted by the UN next year. India proposes to implement a programme of national health assurance, which embraces the principles of UHC. It is expected that the government...

-Down to Earth Government sidelines its committee of experts to set up new panel to review India's intellectual property rights policy The politics of protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) is becoming more curiouswith the commerce ministry setting up a think tank to draft a national IPR policy while sidelining a committee of experts it had set up earlier. Annoyed academics who were asked to help formulate the policy in July this year...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Some multinational companies (MNCs) have been delaying the launch of life-saving drugs in India years after getting monopoly rights, while cheaper generic versions of exorbitantly-priced medicines are going off the shelves under the product patenting law. Corporates such as Japanese firm Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, US-based Bristol Myers-Squibb (BMS) and Swiss firm Novartis are deferring the launch of medicines critical for treatment of serious non-communicable diseases like cancer, HIV,...