Marketing of medicines in India

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7443.778

BMJ 2004;328:778-779 (3 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7443.778

Editorial

Marketing of medicines in India

Informing, influencing, or inducing?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

India has a large pharmaceutical industry. A major expansionstarted in the early 1970s when the Indian government took twofateful decisions. Firstly, it decided to permit domestic manufacturersto produce generic versions of patented molecules without permissionfrom overseas innovators—provided a different manufacturingprocess was employed. Secondly, small scale pharmaceutical unitswere eligible for huge fiscal incentives and state subsidies.The new policy led to an unprecedented growth of medicine makers.Today an estimated 17 000 pharmaceutical companies produce over40 000 branded formulations, many times more than the rest ofthe world.

Since the industry has free access to medicines discovered abroad,there is little incentive to undertake research to make newdrugs. Consequently, nearly all companies are engaged in viciouscompetition to sell the same molecules under different brandnames. Over 140 brands of omeprazole and over 120 brands ofcefadroxil exist in India. As companies resort . . . [Full text of this article]

Chandra M Gulhati, editor

Monthly Index of Medical Specialities (MIMS India), 90 Nehru Place, New Delhi 110019, India (indianmims@yahoo.co.in)

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