-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...

-Hindustan Times At least 9 homeless deaths are reported across Delhi every day. Most die of drug addiction. They die, unidentified across Delhi every year, and the numbers mount. In 2005, the number of unidentified bodies in Delhi was 2,202. In 2015, this figure rose to 3,285. In areas surrounding Kashmeri Gate, Old Delhi and Yamuna Bazar -- areas with most homeless -- the Delhi Police find at least five unidentified bodies every...

-The Hindu The RCEP is a regional trade agreement being negotiated between the 10 ASEAN countries currently in Auckland. Humanitarian aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has warned India that the country will not remain ‘pharmacy of the developing world’ if the proposals in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement (RCEP) are adopted. The RCEP is a regional trade agreement being negotiated between the 10 ASEAN countries currently in Auckland. MSF Access Campaign...

-PTI India will need to front load its investments substantially to almost double the number of people on ARV treatment in less than five years, Minister for Health and Family Welfare, J P Nadda said at UNGA. United Nations: With over 80 per cent of the affordable and quality anti-retroviral drugs used globally to treat AIDS supplied by Indian pharmaceutical industry, India has sought flexibilities in IPR under a global trade...

-Hindustan Times Chennai: The year was 1986. It was a hot, humid day in June when Dr Suniti Solomon first discovered that the deadly HIV/AIDS virus had made its way to India. Then a young doctor, Suniti was testing 100 sex workers as a part of a research project at the Madras Medical College (MMC). Little did she known that a small, humble Madras laboratory’s preliminary research would precipitate a medical challenge on...