According to Dr Vishwajeet Kumar in todays’s Hindustan Times, “there is a scientific consensus that vaccination is the most effective, equitable and economical health intervention that the world has ever seen. Their impact on preventive health is unambiguously transformational and they should be the cornerstone of any effective health strategy.”
Thursday’s announcement of a global commitment to eradicate polio (this is from Reuters) within five years was largely ignored by the Indian media. This is in part because India has been polio free for two years (something that the media has celebrated). In part ,it reflects just how little notice most of the global media took of Thursday’s …
Indian media ignore global commitment to eradicate polio Read More »
According to the World Trade Organisation, no country has objected to India allowing compulsory licences on one cancer drug or to the decision by the country’s courts to invalidate the patent on another. It’s a case of big pharma having no friends, according to this article in The Hindu Business Line. (Compulsory licences allow a …
No action from WTO on India’s compulsory licensing Read More »
Every year an estimated 1.2 million children under the age of five are killed by pneumonia. It accounts for 18 per cent of all such deaths and is believed to be the single largest killer of infants. The second most common cause of bacterial pneumonia is haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) , which can be prevented …
Indian manufacturer cuts price of childhood vaccine by 30 percent Read More »
There has been weeks of coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision on the evergreening of the Novartis patent (including this good wrap-up piece in the US magazine, the Atlantic). A provocative post by the excellent Prashant Reddy on the ever-thoughtful Spicy IP blog today says that the part of India’s patent law which tripped up …
Did the NY Times write a critical part of India’s patent law? Read More »
The Swiss company, Novartis AG has been fighting since 2006 to win a patent for Glivec a cancer drug, the plea for which today was rejected by the Indian Supreme Court. According to the law, section Section 3(d) bars companies from making minor changes in existing patented drugs to keep extending the patent, a concept known as …
This is the kind of in-depth, on-the-ground reporting that few newspapers can afford. The Hindu looks at how the public health system fails the poorest pregnant women in Thane, just next to Mumbai. Reporters actually question where some of the failures happen and why. For example, scans are so difficult to come by in part …
There is a very thoughtful piece in Open Magazine on the problems of using herbal and ayurvedic medicines in the modern age. In many sectors, these medicines take the lion’s share of the market for treatment of many diseases in India — it is a Rs 8,000 crore a year market (over $1 billion). But …
There’s a fascinating NY Times blog interview today with USAid administrator, Rajiv Shah. The future of USAid involvement with India is, he thinks, nothing like the past. “We focus on using our India mission as a development innovation laboratory to try and find those partners in the private sector, scientists and entrepreneurs who are creating …
USAid sees its future with entrepreneurs not government Read More »
The Wall Street Journal has developed an obsession with TB in India. It is an important subject but enough to justify five big articles in the last year? The most recent (from yesterday) is again severely critical of the Government of India. The gist of the WSJ allegations is that Government is dragging its feet rather than …
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