-The Telegraph New Delhi: Doctors who receive gifts from pharmaceutical companies are more likely to prescribe expensive versions of medicines and more drugs per patient, a US study released on Wednesday suggested. The study is among the first to quantitatively measure the impacts of such gifts and challenges claims by sections of pharmaceutical industry executives that industry gifts are not intended to influence prescriptions doctors write. Health policy researchers who analysed prescription patterns...

-The Hindu Business Line Come November, the Jan Aushadhi initiative completes nine years. But despite its recent achievements, there's more work to be done. PT Jyothi Datta writes Earlier this year, Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister Ananth Kumar vowed to end the “medicine mafia” in the country by opening many more Jan Aushadhi kendras, stores that sell generic medicines at affordable prices. Kumar was echoing the mission outlined by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley...

-The Times of India and other agencies WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump has promised to bring the cost of prescription drugs in the country "way down" and let other countries pay more for these medicines. If effected, Trump's new policy on prescription drugs, dicussed with his cabinet at the White House on Monday, could have grave implications for India. The US has long had a grouse with India over its patent...

-Down to Earth Why did we grant Pfizer's claim on a pneumonia vaccine which has been rejected elsewhere? In august, the medical and public health fraternity was stunned when India’s Patent Office granted US Pharma giant Pfizer’s claim on its vaccine against pneumonia, the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), marketed as Prevnar13. For a country that has stricter patentability criteria than most others, India’s decision was baffling because Pfizer’s patent has been rejected...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The sale of drug combinations containing last-resort antibiotics is rising faster than overall antibiotics sales in India, health researchers have said in a study that also highlights the government's failure to stop the sale of irrational and unapproved antibiotic cocktails. While total antibiotics sales in India rose 26 per cent over a four-year period, says the study, there was a 174 per cent increase in the sales of...