Ending 2024 with some cheer, some learnings

It’s the season of gift-giving, goodwill and all things cheery, and in that spirit, here’s bringing you all of the good news, health-wise, that this week has had to offer. In more welcome news, calls to regulate private hospital charges are growing louder: Bindu Shajan Perappadan reports on health coalition Jan Swasthya Abhiyan’s petition in this regard. Our next piece of news is more interesting than perhaps good: pharmaceutical company AbbVie Healthcare India was reprimanded for ‘unethical marketing practices’ after it was found that it Staying in the pharma lane for a little longer, the Health Minister of Karnataka, Dinesh Gunda Rao, has proposed information sharing and a centralised database between drug control departments of various States in order to deal with the vexing and sometimes fatal issue of not of standard quality drugs flooding the market. And Mr. Rao’s suggestion couldn’t be more timely, in November alone, 111 drug samples tested at Central and State labs were found to be NSQ, even as spurious drugs worth ₹6.6 crore were seized in Kolkata this week. While patient advocacy groups are happy that this will accelerate access to life-saving treatments, experts have warned that India’s population diversity means that bypassing local trials could result in unanticipated adverse effects or reduced efficacy.