Efforts by India and the European Union
to strengthen trade are threatening India's ability to deliver
lifesaving medicines to the world's poorest, analysts say as the two
sides push through protracted negotiations on a free-trade pact.
The two sides said after a summit Friday in New Delhi that they would speed up efforts to reach an agreement this year.
Health industry workers and activists worry India may bow to EU demands for strict intellectual property protections and investor guarantees, which could close down the world's generic drug supply.
India's
$26 billion drug industry has become an immense profit engine, growing
at 15-25 percent a year — but also a lifeline for millions of patients
in poor countries, many in Africa, unable to pay sky-high Western prices
to treat illnesses that include HIV, malaria, asthma and cancer. For
HIV alone, India makes more than 80 percent of the world's medicines.
The
EU says it has suggested a clause in the free-trade pact "to ensure
that nothing in the proposed agreement would limit India's freedom to
produce and export lifesaving medicines."
Despite the EU assurance, Indian drug makers and health workers say two broad provisions in the agreement — one on intellectual property rights,
and the other on investor lawsuits — would make it much easier for
international pharmaceutical giants to sue the Indian government, drug
manufacturers and distributors.
1 comment:
Well, don't forget that India's pharma industry is still leeching off the hard work of first world pharma companies who come up with the original drugs in the first place. I think that India should simply get an agreement where original brand-name drugmakers would allow Indian pharmas to cheaply license their products for cheap manufacture and distribution in the 3rd world. It doesn't take much talent to alter some minor chemical functional group on a drug, to make a copycat. Is that the talent India wants to cultivate? How about India pharma companies pursuing more effort in partnering for original drug development?
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