-The Hindu We need a legal mechanism to ensure that all generics are of the same standard as the innovator product The Prime Minister’s recent announcement on making it mandatory for doctors to prescribe only the generic name, and not brand name of a drug, has led to a flutter. If enacted, the move will make it illegal for Indian doctors to write out a prescription for the trademark of the drug,...
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Cheap generic vs costly branded: Issues in picking right drug in India -Kaunain Sheriff M
-The Indian Express Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants doctors to prescribe generic medicines over branded ones. KAUNAIN SHERIFF M answers key questions on the pricing of drugs and beyond. * What exactly has Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on generic drugs? Speaking in Surat on April 17, the Prime Minister referred to the Pradhan Mantri Bharatiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP), which aims to provide cheaper medical drugs to the people. “In the coming days,...
More »Generics vs big pharma, reloaded -Shamnad Basheer
-The Hindu The proposal to extend the time limit for State-level drug regulatory approvals from four to 10 years could hit the generics market In a scathing letter to the Government of India, the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) took issue with what it considered to be a backdoor extension for data exclusivity norms in the country. It pointed to the recent government proposal to change the four-year time limit for State-level drug...
More »The End TB strategy -Soumya Swaminathan
-The Hindu The Global TB Report 2016, recently released, has revised the estimates for the tuberculosis (TB) burden in India upwards. The country has 27 per cent of the global burden of incident tuberculosis and 34 per cent of global TB deaths. For the year 2015, the updated estimate of incidence (new and relapse TB cases per year) is 2.8 million cases. India diagnosed and notified 1.7 million incident TB patients...
More »A disaster in the making -A Rangarajan
-Frontline Medecins Sans Frontieres warns that the free or regional trade agreements that are being negotiated, which seek to strengthen current patent regimes, are a potential threat to the developing world’s access to life-saving drugs, which it sources mostly from India. WHEN NELSON MANDELA’S GOVERNMENT passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act in 1997 to make medicines more accessible to the poor, 39 big pharmaceutical companies filed law suits in...
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