With around a fortnight to go before Presidentbegins his visit to India, US-based pharma giants have warned that New Delhi could lose out in the acute global competition in attracting investment from them if the country refuses to strengthen regulatory protection for patented drugs.
The top brass of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry body that represents interests of the Big Pharma, also expressed their concern over India’s judicial delays in settling cases related to intellectual property rights (IPR), before they began a series of meetings with senior government functionaries here on Friday.
PhRMA members have invested over $45.8 billion in drug R&D process globally in 2009, 70% of total worldwide investments in the area during the year. Frontline companies like Pfizer, Glaxo-SmithKline, Novartis, Merck & Co, Johnson & Johnson, Genzyme and Sanofi Aventis, Abbott and Eli Lilly are part of this lobby group.
Stating that uncertainty over the fate of patented drugs caused by judicial delays was frustrating, Chris Singer, president, international section, PhRMA, said, ?… the truth is that investments of US pharma companies with a focus on R&D and their decision to launch many of the patented drugs in the Indian drug market are intrinsically related to how well their patents are protected here.? He added that since only less than 1% of all drugs in the Indian market are patented, there was no case for India to be over-cautious.
PhRMA deputy vice-president Nancy Adams said there is acute global competition to attract investment from US pharma companies. ?Countries are literally knocking our doors to woo investments. There is Singapore, China, Brazil and many European countries which are very aggressively promoting their countries as attractive destinations for investment,? she said.
However, said Adams, drug firms do weigh a lot of different factors including the policy atmosphere around intellectual property rights. ?India has great manufacturing capacities and capabilities as well as high quality scientific talent. It is in India?s hands to encourage the right policy environment to attract the investment,? she said.
?Less than 1% of all medicines in Indian drug market are patented. Not a single medicine on India?s essential drug list is patented. However, according to the World Health Organisation, only 20% of the country can afford even those off-patent medicines. So, we do not believe that patents undermine access to medicine in any way in India,? Singer added.
However, Singer added that PhRMA makes a clear distinction between ?counterfeit? and ?generic? drugs. ?We are absolutely clear that the issue of patent should be excluded from the definition of ?counterfeit drugs?. While generic drugs would have undergone a regulatory approval system and hence would have a valid stamp of quality, counterfeit drugs do not go through any quality check which is an integral part of any regulatory approval system.?