-Financial Express If patents continue to determine global access to vaccines and drugs, then fighting Covid-19 will remain a distant dream for most countries Vaccines are badly required by the world, as are drugs like Remdesivir and Tocilizumab, and medical equipment like ventilators and oxygen concentrators. A large number of countries, particularly low- and middle-income ones, are struggling to access vaccines, drugs and equipment. There cannot be a more important occasion than the...

-Hindustan Times A rapid and universal vaccination programme is essential to control a surge of this magnitude and time is of the essence — for the virus is not standing still The second wave of Covid-19 is overwhelming India. The official death toll is already inching towards 250,000, but this is almost surely a vast underestimate, as the virus sweeps through rural India and kills many whose deaths will never be captured...

-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...

-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...

-The Hindu Land should be given back if the project does not take off: SC New Delhi: Even as several prominent private builders have come under suspicion for delayed completion of housing projects, the Supreme Court has declared land a “scarce natural resource” and forbidden the government from using its powers of compulsory land acquisition to strip poor farmers of their livelihood only to transfer such land to private builders to feed...