-The Telegraph New Delhi: An industry body and medical experts have decried a government proposal to replace gelatin with cellulose to encapsulate drugs, calling it an impractical idea that needlessly injects the vegetarian-non-vegetarian debate into medicines. The Punjab Haryana Delhi (PHD) Chamber of Commerce and Industry today said gelatin had been used for over a century and made up 95 per cent of capsule formulations worldwide, and cautioned that the proposal to...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The World Health Organisation has announced a plan to approve generic versions of two expensive bio-therapeutic anti-cancer molecules in an effort to make them available to low and middle-income countries. It said it would invite manufacturers to submit applications for pre-qualification of biologically similar versions of rituximab, used to treat chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and trastuzumab, used to treat breast cancer. The pre-qualification process is a mechanism...

-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,...

-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...

-The Indian Express The rights-based approach departs from the ‘assurance-based approach’ of the new National Health Policy, which essentially perpetuates the status quo, explains The Indian Express. Since the time the Mental Health Bill was introduced in Rajya Sabha in 2013, decriminalisation of suicide has been its calling card. However, the legislation travels beyond just that colonial era relic, assuming a rights-based approach to mental healthcare, and creating circumstances for removal of...