Mail News Service
New Delhi, Apr 25: Vilasrao Deshmukh, Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences on the occasion of Malaria Day here today launched a new drug.
“The entire World observes 25th April as Malaria day every year. One of the best ways to observe the malaria day is to discover and launch new drugs for fighting the disease. We have assembled to launch a drug that will help in our fight against the disease. It is a pleasure that we are able to launch the new drug on the 25th April, the malaria day. Pleasure is even more enhanced because this drug is the outcome of strong collaboration. This has been developed under a viable Public Private Partnership. It is a product delivered from a PPP project under the Drug and Pharmaceutical Research Programme of the Department of Science and Technology. There are three special reasons to celebrate this launch.
The drug being launched today is the first example of all-out indigenous effort. The drug has passed through all necessary stages of clinical trials. If such an effort serves a national cause, it is even more special. Therefore, launch of a drug for malaria developed through collaboration is a good cause for special celebration.
Second of all, the drug will help our fight against Malaria, a disease which affects poor people even more than others. Malaria parasite does not differentiate between rich and poor people, when it bites. However, larger number of poorer people is affected by the disease than the number of rich. This is on account of several reasons. Malaria is typically grouped among what is termed as “neglected diseases”. In my view there is no such thing as neglected diseases. There may be diseases suffered by “neglected people”.
Therefore, there is a responsibility on all of us to ensure that we win the fight against malaria.
Government of India thought it appropriate to stimulate the drug discovery process by sharing the costs of phase 3 clinical trials in this case. I congratulate Ranbaxy and their R&D team for accepting the challenge of discovering new drugs for malaria.
Thirdly, one of the purposes behind the present innovation is “affordable Human health care”. Affordability is health care is an important requirement. Through, research and development, many new drugs have been discovered globally. The investments needed for drug discovery in the modern world are large. As a result, the costs of several modern drugs are not always affordable to many. Innovations relating to human health care system should in-build three important considerations. They are availability, accessibility and affordability of the innovation. In this particular case for drug malaria, the three criteria have been duly considered.
The Government has laid a pre-condition that the benefits of public investments into development of the drug should be transferred to the ultimate consumers. Ranbaxy has agreed to offset the price at the time of marketing giving due allowance for public investments into clinical trials. The spirit behind the public investment would be honoured in deed by the company. Therefore, the concern for affordability in the drug discovered and releases today merits special celebration.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/new-drug-to-fight-malaria-launched-on-malaria-day/
