Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 28 August 2013

Make medicines while the sun shines

• In June 2013, member states of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreed to extend the transition period for adherence to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) among least-developed countries (LDCs).
• What this meant was that LDCs need not comply with international rules of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection for pharmaceutical patents till up to July 1, 2021.
• This decision has major implications for public health. Access to essential medicines has been a pressing concern for several decades. Countries such as India — and others in its geography of south Asia as well as the 10 co-members of the World Health Organisation South-East Asia Region (WHO SEAR) — need to use this opportunity to productively and imaginatively promote access to medical products such as medicines, vaccines and diagnostics.

• The period since the adoption of WTO’s Doha Declaration in 2001 has seen dramatic growth in the quantum and diversity of participants in international policy debates concerning innovation and access to medical technologies.

• Access to medical products in the context of intellectual property protection was initially examined within the WHO by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health (CIPIH), set up in 2003.
• It contained a number of recommendations aimed at fostering innovation and improving access to medicines.
• In 2008, a World Health Assembly resolution referred to the Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.
• It aimed to promote new thinking on innovation and access to medicines, for needs-driven, essential health research and development, relevant to diseases that disproportionately affected developing countries.
• For India this places a dual challenge — as a user of medicines and a society committed to minimising health-access inequity and as an economy with a robust pharmaceutical industry, especially in the generics space.

Economies of scale

• For many developing countries, including some of India’s partners in the WHO’s Southeast Asia Region (SEAR), options are limited by the small size of their markets and lack of indigenous technological, productive and regulatory capacities.
• This lack of capacity to create a competitive environment needs to be addressed.
• The critical issue is that the economics of supply to an individual country with a limited market may be insufficient to attract potential generics suppliers.
• To allow, therefore, for economies of scale and a degree of competition, it is important that small markets engage together as much as is possible.
• International institutions — such as the WHO or the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) — could be associated to assist SEAR countries in facilitating and financing group purchases from both branded and generics manufacturers to promote access to medical products.
• This is also a time for such countries to consolidate new approaches to intellectual property management for public health.
• From the time that Indonesia focussed the attention of the global health community on sharing of viruses that led to the WHO Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework, a new platform for benefit sharing has emerged.
• The Framework enables the sharing of benefits derived from such viruses and includes new methods of management of related intellectual property (IP) through developing Standard Material Transfer Agreements.
• In turn, these provide for a range of options for biological material recipients, such as influenza vaccine manufacturers, to enter into benefit-sharing agreements.
• This is for the first time that the use of genetic resources and associated right of prior informed consent, primarily under the domain of the Convention on Biological Diversity — and in keeping with the principles of the “Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilisation”, which of course awaits ratification — has been applied to health products.

Genetic resources

• The success of the PIP framework has opened the door to exploring future collaborations in access to medicines, both traditional and modern.
• India has a wide variety of genetic resources and we need to explore strategies to optimise the lessons of PIP in the context of medical products.
• It is known that traditional medicine provides leads for the development of new treatments. Many modern medicines were originally based on herbal products.
• For example, oseltamivir, used to treat various influenza infections, is based on shikimic acid, which is isolated from Chinese star anise, a cooking spice used in traditional Chinese medicine.
• Current malaria treatments contain synthetic derivatives of artemisinin, which is derived from a plant, sweet wormwood or Artemisia annua.

• This is an ancient Chinese medicine that was in fact used to treat malaria-stricken soldiers during the Vietnam War and was developed, through an international partnership, into a widely-used pharmaceutical product for malaria treatment.

Aadhar e-KYC : Fast, Secure & Cost Effective

• The Unique Identification Authority of India, UIDAI has developed the e-KYC (Electronic – Know Your Customer) service, which promises to substantially improve customer services in the near future.

• The new offering, e-KYC allows an Aadhar number-holder to authorize UIDAI to release his personal details to any service provider to allow instant activation of services like bank account, mobile connection etc.

• Know Your Customer or KYC is a mandatory process that most financial institutions and mobile companies need to complete in regards to all their customers.
• Aadhar card is already a valid KYC instrument, still the KYC process takes much longer time and involves documentation. The e-KYC service being offered by UIDAI will enable to electronically verify identity and address proof of the residents, which will cut down time required on many things like getting a new mobile connection, opening a Bank account or a trading account etc.
• “Not only will this service streamline the process of on-boarding new customers but it will also simplify the process of linking existing customer accounts to their respective Aadhaar numbers in an easy, yet secure manner.

A Window to the World – Project Arrow

• Project Arrow was conceived in April 2008 as an integrated and focused approach to enhance the quality of services and improve the ‘Look and Feel’ of identified Post Offices across the country.
• The underlying objective of the project was to provide all e-enabled services so that Post Offices become a “Window to the World” for the aamaadmi.
• Project Arrow follows a focussed approach with aamaadmi in the centre.

Scope of the Project

• To make Post Offices, especially those in the rural areas, a window to the common person for availing services, up till now confined to urban post office;
• To enable Post Offices to play a larger role in the social and economic transformation of the country by taking up new roles and challenges;
• To transform the large man power into a committed and professional human resource;
• To provide IT enabled services, especially in areas where it matters the most ;
• To change the “look and feel” of the post office to give it a distinct identity of its own, and;
• To ensure a return on investment necessary for a self- sustained growth and development. Every Project Arrow Post offices should be a profit center.

Strategy Adopted

• Implementation of the Project in a phased manner.
• Clearly define the objectives.
• Focus on areas of operations where minimum efforts can give maximum results.
• Identify key performance indicators.
• Putting a monitoring system in place for regular assessment and evaluation;
• Strict adherence to the timelines.
• A Steering Committee and a Core Team have been constituted to conceptualize the theme of the project and to monitor the implementation through all its stages.

• Two Work Stream Leaders for Core Operations and Look & Feel were identified with 4 Change Agents, with each of them having the responsibility of planning and implementation of changes down the line in different fields of activities.

• Each Change Agent supported by 3-4 members.

Two Components of the Project

• ‘Get the Core Right’ with focus areas on Mail Delivery, Remittances, Savings Bank and Office Service Levels
• Modernize ‘Look and Feel’ – with focus areas on Branding, IT, Human Resource and Infrastructure

Sources: Various News Paper