Access to Healthcare

As debates over compulsory licensing continue, the view that patents hold the key to access to medicines is widely held. According to this article in the Huffington Post, the accepted view that a stronger patent regime in India will increase the prices of medicines, hitting the poor harder as they spend a larger portion of

India’s National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policy, reported in the Hindu’s business pages earlier in May, could pose a “serious” hurdle to allowing access to affordable drugs, according to experts.The policy has left the country’s patent laws intact and specifically did not open up Section 3(d) of the Patents Act for reinterpretation, the clause which

According to an article by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) last month, access to affordable medicines could be severely restricted for millions of people around the world under the current proposals in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement. MSF sounded the alarm regarding the potential harmful consequences of the trade deal ahead of the

That’s the question the government must address say the OPPI. According to an article by the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), price control is neither a viable nor sustainable strategy for increasing access to medicines.  Director general of Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), Ranjana Smetacek said “The focus must shift from

Debates on how to improve healthcare in developing countries often include this premise: patents can potentially raise drug prices, so they should be abolished for better public health. This point of view is particularly widely held in a country like India, with the government’s latest National  Sample Survey Office report pointing out 86 percent of