India

  A new, ten-year, multi-billion dollar action plan for global vaccination may fail to deliver if it does not directly address the weaknesses in routine immunisation programmes. Nineteen million children are being missed each year and this challenge must be explicitly addressed, the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said today.   Afghanistan: A young child receives a vaccination against Diphtheria, Tetanus and Polio. Photo: Ton Kuene   A ‘Global Vaccines Action Plan’ has been designed to implement the ‘Decade of Vaccines’ project and will be considered by Health Ministers gathering next week in...

  Hearings in the case opposing Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis and the Indian government are now set to start on 10 July. The Novartis Supreme Court case is the final act in a legal battle that stretches back six years over India's future capacity to produce low-cost generic medicines for its people, and for patients across developing countries. Given the possible implications for generic production and the availability of affordable medicines from India, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), along with other treatment providers, patient groups and affected communities, has appealed to Novartis to drop its case against the “pharmacy of the developing world”. MSF launched a social media campaign calling for Novartis to stop its...

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis patient and TBME blogger Athong talks from India about the stigma he faces living with the disease. To read his blog visit: http://blogs.msf.org/tb/

Groundbreaking Move Sets Precedent for Overcoming Drug Price Barriers Delhi/Geneva – In a landmark case, the Indian Patent Office has issued the first-ever compulsory license in India to a generic drug manufacturer. This effectively ends German pharmaceutical company Bayer’s monopoly in India on the drug sorafenib tosylate, used to treat kidney and liver cancer. The Patent Office acted on the basis that Bayer had not only failed to price the drug at an accessible and affordable level, but that it had also failed to ensure that the medicine was available in sufficient and sustainable quantities within India. “We have been following this case closely because newer drugs to treat HIV are patented in India, and as...