[Ip-health] MNCs working against Indian drug firms, Anand Sharma tells WIPO chief

[Kajal Bhardwaj]

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/biz/india-business/MNCs-working-against-Indian-drug-firms-Anand-Sharma-tells-WIPO-chief/articleshow/5219881.cms
MNCs working against Indian drug firms, Anand Sharma tells WIPO chiefPTI 11 November 2009, 05:40pm IST


 NEW DELHI: India on Wednesday
complained to the UN intellectual property rights body, WIPO, that some
multinational firms have launched campaign against country's pharmaceutical
industry, which has broken their "cartel" in the generic drugs.



 "We
know how the campaign was there.(They) still continue to misinform, mislead and
confuse when it comes to the Indian generics, which have brought a major change
in the world," commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma informed Francis
Gurry, the director general of Geneva-based World Intellectual Property
Organisation (WIPO), in the capital.



 Several consignments of
off-patent generic drugs by Indian firms have been seized in the recent past in
Europe on way to destinations like Brazil and some African nations.




 While these are off-patent drugs, some of the European nations have
confiscated alleging they violated their IPRs.



 "There was a time
when there was suffocating stranglehold of multinational drug cartels in the
anti-retrovial drugs for HIV AIDS," Sharma said.



 It was the Indian
pharmaceutical firms which have brought down the annual HIV AIDS treatment cost
from $11,000 to $400, he said at a meeting jointly organised by the ministry,
WIPO and the FICCI.



 Africa and Latin America are major markets for
India's low cost drugs used for treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
The two continents account for around 15% of India's total pharmaceutical
exports of about Rs 40,000 crore.



See also
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/business/india-takes-mncs-wipo-367
http://www.blonnet.com/2009/11/12/stories/2009111252151500.htm
http://m.economictimes.com/PDAET/articleshow/5219937.cms