India has great dreams for Pharma, but 'no pathway for reality,' says DG of ICMR

Ruing the fact that so far no big concrete proposals for the Indian pharmaceutical industry have been issued by the government putting forward laws and regulations to guide drugmakers and medical researchers alike, VM Katoch, Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Secretary, Health Services, Government of India said he was dismayed at the fact that India had 'great dreams but no pathway for reality.'

Dr Katoch was speaking earlier this month on the occasion of Life Science Conclave 2010, a two-day event organized by the Confederation of Indian industry annually, aiming at providing a platform to the various stakeholders of the Indian life sciences industry to come together and deliberate on developing a model that will help propel India into realizing its potential as a pharmaceutical giant. He also stressed the need to develop some concrete plan based on the outcome of the conclave. That proposal will be viewed positively by the government, Dr Katoch assured. Participants of the symposium included delegates from major pharmaceutical companies, government officials from India and the USA, and the academia.

To deal with the rising costs of drug discovery and development, Big Pharma has started looking at low cost destinations like India, China and Brazil. These geographies further serve as attractive pharmaceutical markets that are expected to grow at more than double the growth rate of the pharma market's global average, it was noted.