-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,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Regulatory efforts to get doctors in India to prescribe medicines only through their generic names, initiated about 15 years ago, will need to overcome legal challenges and resistance from sections of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, experts said. Senior pharmacologists and industry analysts have also said it will be misleading to presume that prescriptions with generic names will automatically translate into lower medicine bills for patients as studies...

-Down to Earth A high level UN panel on Access to Medicines wants members to make full use of TRIPS flexibilities to protect public health If ever India needed a clear endorsement of its laws on intellectual property rights (IPRs) and their application in meeting public health priorities, it has come from the highest quarters. The report of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel (HLP) on Access to Medicines has, directly...

-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...

-The Hindu MSF Secretary General Jerome Oberreit on the increasing threat to affordable health care worldwide. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors without Borders, the international humanitarian medical aid organisation that is active in 69 countries, serves populations affected by epidemics, armed conflicts, natural calamities and manmade disasters. MSF has relied heavily on generic drugs, much of which has been sourced from India, to deliver health care to some of the most...