Activities
Hepatitis-B Vaccination Misleading
Policy and Promotion:
This publication
of DAF-K critically looks at the policy of government of India in which it
plans to vaccinate all new born children. But in the Indian context the cost is
prohibitive, the ‘universal’ programme as is planned in India, would leave out
the most vulnerable section amongst the infants and there are cost effective
alternatives to this universal immunization so as to reduce the HBeAg pool.
The cost vaccine
for Universal Vaccination of the newborn would be Rupees 1250 million, at
Rupees 50 per child for three doses. Compare this with the budget in the year
200-2001 of Rupees 1250 million allotted by government of India for National
Tuberculosis Programme. It is necessary to address these questions in a
developing country like India, where financial resources is always a
constraint. Secondly in any case management should consider cost efficacy and
effective of any healthcare intervention that is paid through public money.
According to WHO “India has more TB cases than any other country in the world.
Every year 2 million people in India develop TB and nearly 500,000 die from it-
more than 1000 every day”. Also the booklet contains the correspondence it had
with the drug company GSK, which was promoting misleading advertisement for the
hepatitis B vaccine. The booklet is priced at Rupees 15.00
Study of Pain Killers (Analgesics
& Antipyretics and NSAIDS) listed in a commercial publication for doctors’
use:
This study is an
effort to place before the consumer groups that are involved in campaigning for
Rational Drugs, about the most commonly used group of drugs – the pain killers.
For the sake of
the study all the pain killers listed in MIMS of June 2004, were culled and
studied if the drug is Rational or not and then if the drug is listed WHO Model
List of Essential Drugs or not. The study results show that of the 235
formulations that were scrutinized only 22 (9%) conformed to the Essential Drug
List of WHO and 140 (60%) were Rational drugs and the remaining 95 (40%) were
irrational. Apart from this the study has looked at the drug prices of some
Essential Drugs. The price differences are indeed huge. In the next phase DAF-K
plans to take up the issue of drugs availability for treating anemia.
Patents and access to medicines:
The Indian Patent
Act of 1970 has been amended during the parliament of 2005. DAF-K members
actively joined the national and international network and contributed. Also
several members of DAF-K met the local Member of Parliament and upraised them
about the issue.
Apart from contributing articles to the media addressed over a dozen public
meetings at schools, colleges, universities, lawyers' forum and consumer groups
on the issue of patents.
“DAF-K” award:
This is an
attempt to bring the issue to medical students. So DAF-K has announced an award
of Rupees 2000 for the best article on the title “Patents and access to
medicines” for medical students in Karnataka. The article should focus on
the implications of changes in the Indian Patent Act of 1970 under the
pressures by WTO (World Trade Organization) and also how ‘strong patents'
create hurdles to access to medicines. A list of references had been suggested
for gathering information on the topic. In response DAF-K has received few
articles that need to be scrutinized.
The cash prize
will be given away at a public function during last week of May 2005 at
Dharwad. Depending on the donation we plan to have this award every year.
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