The industry body, Assocham has asked the government to extend huge tax incentives for the pharmaceutical sector research and development of anti-biotics for pandemic diseases like Swine Flu which has entered India.
Swati Piramal, senior president, Assocham who was presiding over the CFO meet said, ?The government should ensure that the next pharmaceutical policy is unveiled in which bunch of tax concessions are rewarded to healthcare industry.?
Assocham is of the view that with the World Health Organisation (WHO) declaring Swine Flu as a global pandemic, India is not prepared for handling it yet. Piramal urged the industry to come together and take a call on it.
According to Assocham, India needs to extend huge tax incentives for pharmaceutical sector research and development so that it embarks upon path of innovations to make anti-biotics for pandemic diseases like Swine Flu which has entered India. Piramal further said that swine flu which has entered India is an alarm for the government and it is high time that there is a development of anti-biotics drugs for such kind of pandemic diseases. ?For this, the pharmaceutical sector needs to have the tax incentives from the government,? said Piramal.
The number of swine flu cases has gone up to sixteen in India. According to estimates, there have been five cases with infections confirmed in Delhi, eight people in Hyderabad, one in Goa and two in Coimbatore. Ghulam Nabi Azad, union health minister gave have said that India was prepared at every level to fight against this challenge of influenza. Azad said in a press conference that the number of positive cases is very less as compared to the population in India. Therefore there is no need to panic. The country has enough stock of medicine and the disease is fully curable.
Azad also reassured the people by saying that all the cases that have been reported so far are being treated and five patients have already been discharged.
But on the other hand, Piramal who is also the director of Piramal Healthcare expressed serious concern saying that India is prepared to take on menace of pandemic flu as only three to four states in India have devices for its detection. According to WHO, 74 countries in world have reported 28,774 cases of influenza, including 144 deaths.
