-The Hindu Business Line MUMBAI: The government on Monday constituted a standing committee headed by Niti Aayog to oversee the drug pricing regime, a move which could clip the powers of drug pricing regulator, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA). The Standing Committee on Affordable medicines and Health Products will be headed by NITI Aayog member (health), and includes chief economic adviser, besides secretary department of health research, director general of health...

  In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The health ministry was actively mulling compulsory licensing, apart from price capping, of “orphan drugs” (for rare diseases), when the department of pharmaceuticals abruptly issued an order exempting such medicines from price control, derailing plans to make these drugs affordable. The health ministry discussed price capping and invoking compulsory licence for these “exorbitantly” priced “orphan drugs” at a meeting on January 3, the day when DoP...

-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...