MSF urges India to protect access to affordable medicines

Médecins Sans Frontières has today kicked off a campaign urging the Indian government and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to cave in to the unrelenting, intense pressure to loosen up its patent laws to make it easier for multinational pharmaceutical companies to get patents, and block production of more affordable generics.

The international medical humanitarian organization says this intense pressure on India comes from Japan, the USA and the European Union, who are all ultimately seeking to water down India's progressive patent law, which places health over profit. It is India's law that enables the production of the vast majority of the generic medicines that MSF relies on to treat patients in our projects across the globe - over 200,000 people just for HIV. It is also allowed the scale up of HIV treatment to nearly 14 million people worldwide today.

“Without this lifeline of affordable generic medicines, we simply wouldn't be able to do our work and the life-saving medicines of millions of people are under threat. Now this lifeline is under threat,” says MSF.