-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Around 40% of the essential medicines in India with lowest MRP are priced significantly higher than estimated production costs, an assessment by the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows highlighting the “exorbitant” profiteering by pharmaceutical companies and the scope for lowering prices of drugs. While innovative and newer drugs for cancer, hepatitis C and rare diseases are out of reach of many due to their unaffordable prices,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In what is being seen as an attempt to delay launch of low priced generic medicines, multinational drug makers have asked the government to create a registry providing information about all drug applications pending manufacturing and marketing approval. The proposal, if accepted by the government, will help ‘big pharma’ pre-emptively challenge generic drug makers in court for allegedly infringing upon their patents and in turn blocking...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: To promote low-cost generic medicines, the government’s top drug regulatory board has allowed Jan Aushadhi Kendras — which are like fair price shops for medicines under the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana — to substitute doctor’s prescription with a generic brand. On Thursday, the Drugs Technical Advisory Board cleared a proposal to amend a rule under the drugs law. “This proposal asking permission for chemists to...

-The Hindu Consumption of poor quality medicines could be accelerating drug resistance. India has to share some of the blame It is common for patients to stop taking medicines as soon as they start feeling better. Doctors have blamed this particular habit — of not completing the entire dose of antibiotics — to the emergence of drug resistant strains in diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis (TB). However, experts say that under-dosing,...

-The Hindu The disease cannot be eliminated without universal access to affordable, quality diagnostics and drugs After decades spent battling the scourge of tuberculosis (TB) in developing countries, 2018 might be the year that it is finally accorded the gravitas it deserves. On September 26, the UN General Assembly will, for the first time, address TB in a High-Level Meeting and likely release a Political Declaration, endorsed by all member nations, to...