<p>Judgment of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Shalbjit Singh Vs Punjab State Pollution Control Board & Others dated 21/11/2024.</p> <p>A letter petition dated November 5, 2022 was sent
Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical group, is stepping up the case for use of its experimental pandemic flu vaccine even ahead of a new virus mutation that could trigger a future lethal outbreak in humans. Jorg Reinhardt, head of vaccines and diagnostics, said the company would publish scientific data showing that its H5 vaccine stimulates rapid protection with a second booster jab against pandemic flu strains for at least seven years. Many specialists believe two flu injections may be necessary to provide significant protection from a pandemic, but there is far less current global capacity than supply. Reinhardt said a single flu vaccine shot would normally only offer protection after four to six weeks, but an initial jab would allow a subsequent booster to become effective within two to three days. His remarks come at a time of fierce competition between vaccine companies, which have invested significantly in pandemic flu and are attempting to recover their costs as international concern wanes. Companies including Baxter, Sanofi-Aventis and Solvay are all making arguments for the advantages of their own products, and GlaxoSmithKline raised the profile of its H5N1 vaccine last year when it agreed to donate to a "solidarity' stockpile for poor countries. World Health Organisation officials caution against labelling such products "pre-pandemic' vaccines, because they will only be effective if it is a mutation of the current H5N1 bird flu strain that triggers a pandemic. Others remain cautious about any preventative vaccination because of the cost and strain on public health systems, and concern that widespread use could trigger side effects. Reinhardt stressed it was up to the governments to decide whether or not to buy and use his vaccine. "We will share the data with everyone who is willing to listen and make the scientific argument that it provides protection,' he said. His comments came as Novartis unveiled a new Institute for Global Health at its vaccines research office in Siena, which will attempt to develop non-profit vaccines to protect against three salmonella-based infections that cause diarrhoea, one of the leading causes of disease and death in young children around the world. He said the institute, mirroring its work in Singapore to find medicines to treat illnesses for which there is no commercial market, would employ 50 scientists within three years and seek support from funds such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Institute by the end of this year.
India has performed poorly in international patent filings last year compared to its neighbour China, according to data released by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Filing patent applications under WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) enables companies to secure patent protection in various countries. It is a measure for a knowledge-based economy and a barometer of the spread of innovation-based companies in each country. In the global race for knowledge-based industries, WIPO's data clearly suggest that India is far behind China. India, for example, filed only 686 applications last year to secure patent protection in countries that are members of the PCT compared to 831 in 2006. In the same period China's patent applications grew 38.1 per cent to reach an all-time high 5,456. China's impressive growth in its innovation-based companies enabled the Middle Kingdom to occupy seventh place in the world's top 15 countries. "We expect India to grow rapidly in life-sciences research, but at this juncture its considerable research and development activity has not translated into patent filings,' said Francis Gurry, deputy-director general at WIPO overseeing the PCT work. The stark differences between these two big economies are due to the underlying differences in their overall economic activity. While software and services dominate the Indian economy, new manufacturing activities are at the centre of the Chinese miracle, Gurry said. Until now, the industrialised countries
The Biotechnology Industry Association (BIA), the representative body of international biotech product makers, has expressed concern over the patent criteria norms prescribed under the Indian Patent Act. In a representation to the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) on February 11, the association has demanded that India be kept under the priority watch list of USTR due to inadequate intellectual property (IP) compliance.
The Canadian health and drug regulator Health Canada has asked Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals Canada (RPCI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited (RLL) to withdraw its generic, 25 microgram per hour strength, fentanyl pain-relief patches from the Canadian market due to safety concerns. Ranbaxy controls more than 50 per cent of the generic fentanyl market in Canada and this is among the four major revenue earners for Ranbaxy in that country.
india is set to make another round of changes in procurement norms for health schemes funded by World Bank loans. This follows the bank's review of Indian projects running on its loans, highlighting
The government must encourage the manufacture of cheaper drugs which will benefit the consumer. Till the early 1980's, dominant foreign companies dominated pharmaceutical manufacturing in India. Today the dominant ones are Indian owned. The then Indian patent laws helped this transformation. Until recently India recognised only process patents. Reverse engineering by Indian pharmaceutical chemists enabled Indian companies to replicate popular foreign drugs through different processes and market them in India.
Leading Indian pharmaceutical companies such as Nicholas Piramal, Orchid Chemicals and Jubilant Organosys, have tied up with foreign companies to leverage technology, talent and cost-benefits to develop new chemical entities (NCE). Zydus Cadila, the latest to join the bandwagon, announced on February 4 a collaboration with Karo Bio of Sweden, an upcoming drug discovery company with expertise in nuclear receptors (a group of specific drug targets), structural biology and drug design. FOREIGN AID
The Indian drug industry, which has proven its strengths in manufacturing cheap generic or off-patent medicines for the global market, may soon find a similar generic opportunity in the molecular diagnostic segment. This is after the patent protection on molecular diagnostics based on PCR (polymerase chain reaction) platform expired globally.
When pharmaceutical company Novartis challenged the rejection of its patent application for the leukemia drug Gleevec in Novartis AG v. Union of India, it became the first major legal challenge to India’s
A Kannan has been feeling dizzy with fever for days, his limbs are shaky. He has come to the government hospital in Tamil Nadu's coastal Cuddalore town with others from nearby Kudi kadu village with
