556 Essential: The IPR waiver can easily expedite the mass production of generics, making them cheaply available. Reuters
Devinder Sharma
Food & Agriculture Specialist
This is disturbing. With only one-in-500 among the low-income countries having received the vaccine shot against one-in-four among the high-income countries, gross vaccine inequality has been at play. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), poor countries have received only 0.2 per cent of the vaccine doses while the rich countries have walked away with a share of 87 per cent.
So far, only 32 per cent in America, 27 per cent in the UK, 2 per cent in India and 0.3 per cent of the population in the Philippines have received both doses. At this rate, it may take years before the world can emerge out of the pandemic. The rich need to understand they cannot remain safely isolated from the deadly virus till the poor too have got the protective shield.
“Introduction of the competition is the best way to lower the prices. Patent protection is the major barrier to the generic production of these medicines,” SJM said in a statement Sunday, proposing the government to use the public health safeguards in the Patents Act and permit more companies to produce these medicines.
Vaccinating only Brahmastra to contain COVID-19
Dr Rajnesh Kumar
Second wave of Covid -19 Pandemic has caused tremendous amount of sufferings and loss of lives. Not only lives have been lost but there has been an immense physical, emotional and psychological breakdown and financial hardships among the families and communities who have suffered losses. Health care workers are having burnouts and breakdowns. We are struggling to get to the means to get out of this situation.
Public health tools like Covid-19 guidelines, lockdowns and Covid appropriate behaviours including Physical distancing, masking, hand washing and use of sanitizer though have the potential to breakdown the chain of transmission but in Indian context they don’t look like sustainable solutions in this long war against Covid-19. Lockdowns Impact Livelihoods while other measures like masking, physical distancing etc. have elements associated with them like drop in cases leading to complacency making people to aban
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Two Indian states, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, have requested for permission to import Remdesivir, the anti-viral drug from Bangladesh. With COVID cases exploding all over the country, particularly in major urban centres in Maharashtra, Delhi and other states, the frantic effort to source Remdesivir from all available sources has acquired greater momentum.
Remdesivir is the only drug approved so far, for the treatment of COVID patients in life-threatening stages. Though not a silver bullet for a definitive cure, the anti-viral drug has been tested on patients with positive results.
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Indian Production of Remdesivir
Currently, Remdesivir is being produced by seven Indian companies under a voluntary licence agreement with Gilead Sciences, the California-based American biopharma company. Gilead, the patent holder of Remdesivir, has signed agreements with four more Indian Pharmaceutical companies for the manufacture and marketing of the drug.
In a much-needed relief, the Centre has increased the supply of Remdesivir vials to 4,35,000 between April 21 and April 30 from the present level of 2,69,000 vials.