WHO panel proposed treaty requires all governments to share cost   India supports a proposed legally binding global instrument that requires all governments to share the cost of research and development (R&D). The treaty, recommended by a World Health Organisation panel, will boost access to countries least able to pay for medical innovations but need it most. This would also delink profits from medical discoveries. The “Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and...

A government report lends credence to the notion of “two Indias”, or the distinction between “India” and “Bharat” – a theme often debated in recent years. At a time when urban India is growing and policy makers have expressed clear preference for the trend, this report, by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), brings India’s deep urban-rural divide into focus, showing disparities in scale and levels of expenditure and consumption and, equally...

Joseph Munyi, a Kenyan citizen, has been living with HIV for 8 years and, much like other HIV patients, is unemployed. He has been receiving his medication free of charge on account of government programmes and outreach programmes of Medicine Sans Frontieres. His medication comes in the form of generic drugs. However, this situation may not last long as economic interests of few may end up impeding many a public spirited...

The Conflict of Interest Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha is a welcome step to control the grey areas in which “public private partnerships” are conducted. AMONG the many things that have proliferated in the economic boom of the brash new India is conflict of interest. So widespread, comprehensive and many-tentacled has this feature become that it is often no longer even recognised to exist, much less to be a...

-The United Nations Sustainable development will not be achieved unless hunger and malnutrition are eradicated, the United Nations food agency warned today in a new report. “We cannot call development sustainable while this situation persists, while nearly one out of every seven men, women and children are left behind, victims of undernourishment,” said the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, in a news release. In the report...