In October this year, 66 children in the West African nation of Gambia died due to acute kidney injuries. The WHO linked the deaths to contaminated cough syrup manufactured by an Indian company. This is not the first instance: in early 2020, 11 children died in Jammu after consuming adulterated cough syrup.
Access to affordable and quality medicines is a cornerstone of health equity. While India has emerged as the largest provider of affordable generic medicines globally and is known as the pharmacy of the developing world, there are very real concerns over quality and government oversight.
In their new book The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India (Simon & Schuster, 2022), authors Dinesh S. Thakur and Prashant Reddy T. use case studies and data from RTI applications and publicly available sources to expose the shocking gaps in India’s drug regulatory framework. The book traces the history of drug regulation in India, how manufacturers flout the rules, and the lack of enforcement and transparency.
Join the authors, in conversation with Dr. Lancelot Pinto, as they discuss the state of drug regulation in India and how to reform the system.
Speakers:
Dinesh S. Thakur, public health activist and author, The Truth Pill. He turned whistleblower against Ranbaxy after witnessing large-scale data fraud at the company, leading Ranbaxy to plead guilty before an American court in 2013. For his actions, he received the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage and the ACFE Cliff Robertson Sentinel Award. Since 2014, he has advocated for reform of India’s colonial-era Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940 and has founded an advocacy group called the Citizens for Affordable, Safe & Effective Medicine (CASEM). He is also the founder and President of the Thakur Family Foundation, a philanthropic organisation that provides grants for research on public health and health journalism in India.
Prashant Reddy T., lawyer and author, The Truth Pill. He studied law at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and Stanford Law School, California, as a J.N. Tata Scholar. After a stint in the litigation teams at two Delhi-based law firms specialising in intellectual property law, he worked in academia and think tanks in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Singapore. Over the last few years, he has been advising Dinesh Thakur in his advocacy campaign for the reform of drug regulatory law in India. Prashant is also the co-author of Create, Copy, Disrupt: India’s Intellectual Property Dilemmas (OUP 2017).
Moderator:
Dr. Lancelot Pinto, consultant pulmonologist at P.D. Hinduja Hospital and Medical Research Centre, and Visiting Senior Fellow, Artha Global. He is a clinician who has a keen interest in knowledge translation and the practice of evidence-based medicine. His clinical practice includes the management of severe respiratory diseases, both acute and chronic. His areas of interest include the management of drug-resistant tuberculosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and obstructive sleep apnea. He has collaborated with the University of Cape Town, consulted for the World Health Organization and USAID and has ongoing collaborations with McGill University, IIT, IIS, TISS, and SNDT university.