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Generic Medicine production in India

15 July 2010

Letters Editor
Financial Times

Sir,-  I was shocked to read Amy Kazmin’s report, ‘Uncertain prognosis for Indian funds to combat Aids epidemic’, today  that according to Sidharth Dude, an HIV/Aids expert with the New York based World Policy Institute, that the Indian Government was not ‘...in principle at all committed to providing free, or almost free, medicine to people suffering from a potentially fatal disease’. 
      India is one of the leading producers of low-cost generic Aids medicines for other developing countries.  In the European Parliament in Brussels we have launched a new European Parliament Working Group on Innovation, Access to Medicines and Poverty-Related Diseases, of which I am the Chair.  With this group we are aiming to do three things: to improve information about the fact that thousands of people die from treatable diseases; to re-orientate the EU research budget to get more research into treating curable diseases; and lastly we are attempting to ensure that the EU trading agreements do not distort medicine prices that enable developing countries get access to cheaper medicines. 
 India which is popularly described as ‘the pharmacy of the developing world’ could be one of the main beneficiaries of our efforts and should pass on these benefits to its own people.

      
Yours sincerely,

David Martin MEP

DAVID MARTIN MEP (Scotland)
Midlothian Innovation Centre
Pentlandfield, Roslin  MIDLOTHIAN EH25 9RE
Tel/Fax: 0131 440 9040   E: david@martinmep.com
www.martinmep.com