Al Gomhuria, p.6, (5/3/2007)

Queries

By: Abdullah Nassar

The global pharmaceutical companies are currently gaining a lot of profits. In India, pharmaceutical companies imitated drugs during the past years. Now they are tending to innovate new medicines.

Indian pharmaceutical companies, like similar companies in developing countries, lack the necessary financing and investments for research and development of new drugs.

India is propagating an idea in the WTO that calls for allowing developing countries to produce patented drugs without a license at times of crises and epidemics. 

Global pharmaceutical companies are working on safeguarding their medicines and their patents. Avandia, for instance, is a drug produced by Glaxo and it was sold for $ 870 million during the second quarter of the previous year. Sales of Actos, another drug for treating diabetes and produced by Takeda pharmaceutical company in Japan, reached $ 2 billion. 

Dr. Reddy's Labs in India declared that it would put on sale during the coming five years a new drug for treating diabetes. This company spends about $ 48 million on research and development, $20 million of them on research related to new drugs. Some Indian companies imitate international pharmaceuticals and use the returns in developing new drugs.

Therefore, pharmaceutical production around the world is witnessing speedy changes and they are competing on producing the most effective drugs at a lower price.

I believe it is high time for national companies to allocate funds for research and development of new drugs.

Spending funds on research and development is not futile even if the results would not appear in a few months time. Our pharmaceutical companies should benefit from the experiences of similar companies in other worlds, especially Indian companies that have become very competitive in the global markets.