4 years ago
Corona virus pandemic reveals USA's reliance on India/China for drugs
COVID-19 crisis reveals USA's heavy reliance on India and ultimately China for some medical supplies.
As soon as the president of the United States, Donald Trump, publicly said that a particular drug,'hydroxychloroquine' - known as HCQ, could possibly treat Covid-19, the drug became harder to get in the USA. People who were prescribed this particular drug for other illness not related to Covid-19 also had difficulty finding it.
The reason behind this shortage? A ban of exports of this drug by India, whose generic pharmaceutical manufacturers make about 70% of the world supply of this particular drug.
In another step in this supply chain, comes China, which exports about 68% of the ingredients necessary to manufacture HCQ to India. With disruption China's production of these active pharmaceutical ingredients(APIs), Indian manufacturers also faced shortage of the ingredients.
India produces a large varieties of generic drugs (basically copycats of brand-name pharmaceuticals) after the Patent Act of 1970- which allows manufacturing of drugs with the same content of any patented drugs by using different production process. This has given Indian pharmaceutical companies an upper hand in the global pharmaceutical market, including the United States.
This has meant that by 'reverse engineering' a patented drug, Indian pharmaceutical companies have been able to produce cheap alternatives to expensive branded drugs.
Drugs being manufactured this way have been made available against diseases like HIV/Aids in the Sub-Saharan Africa, where people can't afford the branded antiretrovirals.
