At a roundtable organized by the Coalition for Innovation Employment and Development, the U.S.-India Business Council's 'Coalition for Healthy India' released the findings of its report on "The Value of Incremental Pharmaceutical Innovation: Benefits for Indian Patients and Indian Business". The report highlights and substantiates the impact of restrictive policies in India, with respect to medical and pharmaceutical innovation. The report adds a patient-centric perspective to the public dialogue on IPR and drug patents and points out the positive impact that incremental innovation can have on patient care.
Dedicated to ensuring that Indian patients have access to the latest and most effective treatments and cures, CHI brings together like-minded members of the U.S. and Indian business communities, non-governmental organizations, patient advocacy organizations and health professionals to coordinate and support improved access to quality healthcare in India.
According to CHI's Greg Kalbaugh, "We're here in Geneva because we want to make sure that the voice of the patient doesn't get lost in the debate about intellectual property and drug patents. Incremental pharmaceutical innovation has very real benefits, not just for Indian patients, but for patients around the globe. It leads to the development of life-saving drugs as well as drugs that markedly improve quality of life. These are important innovations."
Mr. Kalbaugh pointed out that "The facts bear this out - over 60% of the drugs on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines reflect incremental improvements of older drugs. And in recent years, incremental pharmaceutical innovations have accounted for as much as 65% of new drug approvals by regulatory agencies."
He provided a clear example: "Heat-stable anti-retroviral drugs may not be critically important to people in large cities where there's easy access to electricity and refrigeration, but they're surely important to people in rural areas. People living in rural areas deserve to know that when they take a drug, it's going to work whether they have access to refrigeration or not. Unfortunately, section 3(d) of India's patent law actively discourages just that sort of life-saving innovation."
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