Health, Poverty and Development

Children Treated as Lab Rats

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General Analysis on Social and Economic Policy

By K. S. Harikrishnan
IPS
Aug 14, 2012

India’s lax drug regulation laws have attracted global pharmaceutical companies to conduct unethical human drug trials in India. Collaboration between local Indian hospitals, foreign pharmaceutical companies and academic research institutions ensure fast and low cost introduction of a new drug from the lab to market. While the health ministry has tried to obligate financial compensation for trial-related death and injury, stiff opposition from research organizations has undermined the ministry’s effort to legislate the practice. As many doctors prioritize the extra income from the test rather than the ethical treatment of their patients, illiterate and poor people have become victims of unethical clinical trials.

Four-year-old Deepak Yadav, a mentally disabled boy from Indore city in the Indian state Madhya Pradesh, was being treated for stomach problems at Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, a government hospital for children attached to the M. G. M. Medical College.

But when repeated administration of the anti-ulcer drug Rabeprazole started to exacerbate his condition, his parents stopped treatment and sought help from the Clinical Trial Victims Association (CTVA), which discovered that the boy had been a lab rat for an untested drug.

“We should have been told an unknown drug was being tested on our innocent child and given the choice to say no,” Deepak’s father Sooraj told IPS.

#inde #santé #essais-thérapeutiques #laboratoires #médicaments #enfance #développement #asie

Pharmaceutical Companies Putting Health of World’s Poor at Risk

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By Simon Reid-Henry and Hans Lofgren
Guardian
July 26, 2012

India, a major exporter of generic medicine to the developing world, is facing attacks from pharmaceutical firms backed by the European Union (EU) and the US. In the free trade agreement (FTA) proposal, the EU is calling for intellectual property rights enforcement that could be detrimental for generic drug manufacturers in India. US government has backed the German pharmaceutical company Bayer to revoke the compulsory license for an Indian firm, Natco Pharma to produce cheaper version of its anti-cancer drug. Western politicians are acting to secure the profitability of their own industries as a way out of domestic crisis, while the poor people around the world are losing access to life saving medicines.

India makes cheap medicines for poor people around the world. The EU, pharmaceutical firms and now the US are pressuring the ’pharmacy of the developing world’ to change tack

India is often called the pharmacy of the developing world, which is no great surprise as more than 50% of its $10bn annual generic medicine production is exported.

But the domestic drug industry behind India’s role as global pharmacist stands to emerge rather poorly from the free trade agreement (FTA) that Europe is proposing for India. In late-stage negotiations over the terms of the long-awaited agreement, the EU is calling for intellectual property rights enforcement that goes well beyond India’s obligations as a member of the World Trade Organisation and would make it all but impossible for generic drug manufacturers in the country to continue in their present structure.