Local TB kit, if permitted, may reduce diagnosis cost

A low cost indigenous diagnostic kit for tuberculosis is waiting for approval. It is undergoing final stages of validation, says  Director General of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), Dr Soumya Swaminathan, at a symposium on intellectual property in India organised by the Swiss Embassy. 

The new kit is a joint initiative of the Department of Bio-Technology (DBT), ICMR and the health ministry. "The health ministry is looking for diagnostics of high quality that is also affordable," said Dr Swaminathan. 

Referring to the recent controversy in the US where a company that had a monopoly over a crucial drug hiked its price by 5,500%, Dr Swaminathan said India had to be mindful that companies had that kind of power. The symposium was dominated by those representing Big Pharma interests who emphasised the high costs of drug discovery based on a study by a research centre heavily funded by the pharma industry with pharma-provided data not open to public.

Representatives from multinational healthcare companies like Roche, Novartis and Lucentix, and those from law firms that fight the patent cases for these companies in India were the invited speakers.  They spoke about the need to tighten the patent protection system in India and criticised what they saw as the inefficiencies in the patent granting process.

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