The Hindu Business Line : Pharma MNCs campaigning against domestic sector: Sharma

Tackling cartels: The Minister for Commerce and Industry, Mr Anand Sharma, and the Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, Dr Francis Gurry, at the 5th international forum on ‘Creativity and inventions - A better future for humanity in the 21st century,’ in the Capital on Wednesday. —

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Nov. 11 India complained to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) on Wednesday that some multinational firms have launched a campaign against the country’s pharmaceutical industry.

Mr Anand Sharma, Minister of Commerce and Industry, told Mr Francis Gurry, Director General of WIPO, “We know how the campaign was there. Some multinational firms continue to misinform, mislead and confuse when it comes to the Indian generics, which have brought a major change in the world.

“There was a time when there was suffocating stranglehold of multinational drug cartels in anti-retrovial drugs for HIV AIDS.”

Several consignments of off-patent generic drugs by Indian firms have been seized in the recent past in Europe while being taken to Brazil and some African nations. It was Indian pharmaceutical firms that brought down the annual treatment cost of HIV AIDS to $400 from $11,000, said the Minister at a meeting organised by the WIPO and 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 per cent of India’s pharmaceutical exports of about Rs 40,000 crore.

Another long-standing issue discussed on Wednesday with the WIPO was the right to read for the visually challenged people.

The treaty for visually challenged people, which has been tabled before the WIPO, was discussed in a meeting organised by the National Institute for the Visually Impaired, Daisy Forum of India and Centre for Internet and Society. The visually challenged community of India made a brief presentation and submission before Mr Gurry on India’s position with regard to availability of books in accessible formats for the visually challenged.