Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0024530 (malaria)
 44,886 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

India has launched a liberalization of its economy with restructuring, privatization, and increased imports in order to achieve higher economic performance. This drive also affected the pharmaceutical industry and drug distribution, but in a negative manner. In the 1980s there were 9000 drug manufacturers that together produced up to 60,000 different preparations. In 1992, only 20,000 drugs were produced. The Voluntary Health Organization of India (VHAI) has fought for 10 years for a rational policy on medicines to halt the production of worthless or outright harmful products. For instance, anabolic steroids are sold as nutritional supplements to children, and the banned clioquinol is regularly used against diarrhea despite an international boycott. In recent years unscrupulous manufacturers have sold contaminated water as glucose for infusion bags and anti-D-immunoglobulin which was contaminated with HIV-infected blood. In northern India, a criminal organization bought up used cannulas from hospitals and repacked them for resale as new supplies. While a new medicine policy is formulated, there is a serious shortage of life-saving drugs such as insulin and rifampicin. In the last years, prices have exploded as some products have become six times more expensive. The whole national health system has undergone cost cuts to comply with an ultimatum from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; otherwise, sorely needed dollar loans would not be forthcoming. Funds for fighting tuberculosis and malaria have been trimmed, although AIDS and family planning budgets have been increased. One-fourth of the state health expenditures go to combat AIDS, since about 1 million people are infected with HIV. The pharmaceutical industry has also been embroiled in a patent protection wrangle with American drug exporters who claim that Retrovir or AZT (developed by Burroughs Wellcome) was pirated by the Cipla firm, whereas Cipla countered that it was ferreted out from scientific journals.
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PMID:[India: an expensive and dangerous drug]. 130 Jun 63