Industry reacts with caution to the grant of a compulsory licence to Natco, but cancer patients welcome it and hope for many more. THE first compulsory licence (CL) issued by the Indian patent office, to the local drug manufacturer Natco Pharma Ltd to sell the generic version of Bayer AG's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, has led to varied reactions. The landmark decision has also raised concerns about the outcome of cases...

PROFESSOR Shamnad Basheer joined the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata, in November 2008 as the first Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor in Intellectual Property Law. Before this, he was Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University law school and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC).  He is the founder of several initiatives, including...

A healthcare model relying mainly on people from within the community to provide care is reaping success One of India’s most backward districts and Maharashtra’s worst ranked in human development indicators, Gadchiroli, today finds itself at the forefront of a healthcare revolution that can potentially save millions of infant lives and help India rapidly reduce her abysmal infant mortality rate (IMR). Under the aegis of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), India...

Money from the Department for International Development has helped pay for a controversial programme that has led to miscarriages and even deaths after botched operations Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men, the Observer has learned. Many have died as a result of botched operations, while others have been left bleeding and in agony. A...

Over the past week, I’ve chronicled my investigative research on starvation in India – a project I’ve been working on with a colleague from the Centre for Equity Studies, a New Delhi think tank. We’ve told stories of people who were forced to eat poisoned roots to stay alive; a family that suffered the deaths of members from three different generations in a span of 24 hours; a woman faced with...