India had 56% of new leprosy infections in 2010

"An Indian leper cooks chicken outside her home in Hyderabad. India accounted for 56% of the world's new leprosy infections in 2010 despite declaring itself free of the nerve-destroying disease five years earlier, a report said Saturday" title

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Herbalife India supports Bangalore delegation for International Children's Games (Children's Olympic)

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2012Company joins the effort of Bangalore Schools Sports Foundation to encourage young athletes at grass roots level.

(1888PressRelease) July 07, 2012 - Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF), a global nutrition company, today announced its support of the Bangalore Schools Sports Foundation, an independent, non-profit, accredited, Special Mission Sports Foundation as the 14-member Bangalore city contingent prepares to participate in the 46th International Children's Games (ICG) scheduled to be held at Daegu- South Korea from 12th to 17th July 2012. The delegation was felicitated in Bangalore, by Ajay Khanna, country head, Herbalife India in the presence of other dignitaries such as Mr. BNS Reddy, DIGP, Dr. MP Ganesh, Mrs. Reeth Abraham and Mr. Ashish Ballal. In line with Herbalife's global philosophy of nurturing sports talents, Herbalife India has committed to provide the young athletes with nutrition support to ensure these athletes are in perfect health to deliver their best performance at the games. The 9-member football team from Bangalore will be competing with global teams at Daegu.

Wishing the delegation the very best, Ajay Khanna, Country Head, Herbalife India, said, "At Herbalife we are always looking for ways to encourage and grow the potential of budding athletes by providing them the support they need to hone their talents. We are humbled by this opportunity to contribute in a small measure towards the Olympic journey of these talented children who have been working hard to make a mark on the global stage. On behalf of the Herbalife India family, we would like to wish them well in their quest in Daegu,"

He further added, "I also want to congratulate the Bangalore Schools Sports Foundation for their effort to secure representation for Bangalore city at the games and their effort to encourage and train children at the grass roots level through initiatives like Bangalore School Games and Magic Feet initiative."

Speaking at the event, Elvis Joseph, Director, Bangalore Schools Sports Foundation, said, "We are happy that Herbalife India has decided to partner with us in this endeavour. We have a lot of young talents in India. However, we face challenges in terms of the infrastructure to ensure that the young children receive proper training and guidance. Our goal is to take a bigger contingent to participate at the most prestigious international events for children with the help of companies like Herbalife. In fact, we are working towards getting Bangalore to host the ICG in 2016, in their 50th year."

Bangalore Schools Sports Foundation has taken the task of promoting, nurturing and professionalizing sports from the grass root level to international standards, making its first historic representation at the International Children's games at Athens, Greece in 2009. The foundation has successfully sent the under 15 Boys football team at the 43rd ICG Athens Greece, 44th ICG Manama Bahrain, 45th ICG Lanarkshire Scotland and now the 46th ICG Daegu South Korea 2012.

The ICG, endorsed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has been hosting the Games since 1968.The games are being organized every year in different countries of a city hosted by the city Mayor or Governor inviting children from all over the Globe. It had taken 43 years for Bangalore City (first city from India) to participate at the most prestigious International Children Games. The Daegue ICG will witness participation of over 2000 athletes from 80 cities across 50 countries. To know more about the games, please visit http://www.icg-daegu2012.com/daegu/must.html

Herbalife India continues its association with youth icons cricketer Virat Kohli, badminton champion Saina Nehwal, India's very own boxing champion Mary Kom as well as budding athletes like Squash Champion Dipika Pallikal and tennis star Somdev Devvarman to encourage sporting talent and spread the message of health and active lifestyle. Herbalife sponsors over 150 sporting events, teams and athletes around the world. Herbalife's associated sports sponsorships also include the LA Galaxy, FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi amongst others.

About Herbalife Ltd.
Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) is a global nutrition company that sells weight-management, nutrition, and personal care products intended to support a healthy lifestyle. Herbalife products are sold in 83 countries through a network of independent distributors. The company supports the Herbalife Family Foundation and its Casa Herbalife program to help bring good nutrition to children. Herbalife's website contains a significant amount of information about Herbalife, including financial and other information for investors at http://ir.Herbalife.com. The company encourages investors to visit its website from time to time, as information is updated and new information is posted.

About Bangalore School Sports Foundation
Bangalore Schools Sports Foundation was initiated in 2009, by Mr Elvis Joseph, a state and university medalist, sports promoter by profession with experience in project management, sports administration, turnkey projects, sporting events, training, business development & strategic planning. The Foundation is an independent, non-profit, special mission sports foundation created to serve the State and Nation with programs in Sports Promotion, Instruction, Research, Education, Leadership, Events and Service. The role of the Foundation is to prepare aspiring athletes such as Children, Physically Disabled, Intellectually Challenged, Young Men & Women and Professional Athletes for careers in sports.

Media Contact
Priyanka Bhattacharya
Gutenberg Communications


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India moves closer to rolling out 'drugs for all' plan

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India to give free generic drugs to hundreds of millions

Reuters – 6 hrs ago MUMBAI (Reuters) - India has put in place a $5.4 billion policy to provide free medicine to its people, a decision that could change the lives of hundreds of millions, but a ban on branded drugs stands to cut Big Pharma out of the windfall.

From city hospitals to tiny rural clinics, India's public doctors will soon be able to prescribe free generic drugs to all comers, vastly expanding access to medicine in a country where public spending on health was just $4.50 per person last year.

The plan was quietly adopted last year but not publicized. Initial funding has been allocated in recent weeks, officials said.

Under the plan, doctors will be limited to a generics-only drug list and face punishment for prescribing branded medicines, a major disadvantage for pharmaceutical giants in one of the world's fastest-growing drug markets.

"Without a doubt, it is a considerable blow to an already beleaguered industry, recently the subject of several disadvantageous decisions in India," said KPMG partner Chris Stirling, who is European head of Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals.

"Pharmaceutical firms will likely rethink their emerging markets strategies carefully to take account of this development, and any similar copycat moves across other geographies," he added.

But the initiative would overhaul a system where healthcare is often a luxury and private clinics account for four times as much spending as state hospitals, despite 40 percent of the people living below the poverty line, or $1.25 a day or less.

Within five years, up to half of India's 1.2 billion people are likely to take advantage of the scheme, the government says. Others are likely to continue visiting private hospitals and clinics, where the scheme will not operate.

"The policy of the government is to promote greater and rational use of generic medicines that are of standard quality," said L.C. Goyal, additional secretary at India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and a key proponent of the policy.

"They are much, much cheaper than the branded ones."

Global drugmakers like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck will be hit. They spend billions of dollars a year researching new treatments and target huge growth for branded medicine in emerging economies such as India, where generics account for around 90 percent of drug sales by value, far more than in developed countries.

U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories, which bought an Indian generics maker in 2010, is the biggest seller of drugs, both branded and generic, in India, followed by GlaxoSmithKline.

BIG PHARMA BLUES

In March, India granted its first ever compulsory license, allowing a domestic drugmaker to manufacture a copy-cat version of Nexavar, a cancer drug developed by Germany's Bayer, unnerving foreign drugmakers that fear a lack of intellectual property protection in emerging markets.

That enabled India's Natco Pharma to sell its generic version of Nexavar at 8,800 rupees ($160) per monthly dose, a fraction of the 280,000 rupees Bayer's version cost.

In another blow to Big Pharma's emerging market ambitions, China recently overhauled regulations to grant authorities the power to allow domestic drugmakers to produce cheap copies of medicines protected by patents.

Emerging markets are on track to make up 28 percent of global pharmaceuticals sales by 2015, up from 12 percent in 2005, according to IMS Health, a healthcare information and services company.

Most sales in emerging markets come from branded generics, which are off-patent drugs priced at a premium to those made by local manufacturers.

The Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), a lobby group for multinational drugmakers in the country, argues that the price of drugs is just one factor in access to healthcare and that the scheme need not be detrimental to manufacturers of branded drugs.

"I think this will hasten overall growth of the pharmaceutical industry, as poor patients who could not afford will now have access to essential medicines," said Tapan Ray, director general of OPPI.

About 600 billion rupees ($11 billion) in drugs are sold each year in India, or 482 billion at wholesale. Drugs covered under the new policy account for about 60 percent of existing sales, or 290 billion rupees at wholesale cost.

The government's annual cost is likely to be lower due to bulk purchasing and because patients at private clinics would still pay for their own drugs. States will pay for 25 percent of the free drugs and the central government will cover the rest.

Under various existing programs, around 250 million people, or less than a quarter of India's population, now receive free medicines, according to the health ministry.

India's new policy, to be implemented by the end of 2012 and rolled out nationwide within two years, is expected to provide 52 percent of the population with free drugs by April 2017, at a cumulative cost of 300 billion rupees ($5.4 billion).

That requires a major funding ramp-up from a deficit-strapped government. The scheme has been granted just 1 billion rupees thus far from central government coffers.

STRICT INSTRUCTIONS

Public doctors will be able to spend 5 percent of the budget, equivalent to around $50 million a year, on drugs outside of the government's list, on branded drugs or on medicines that are not on the list. Beyond that, they can be punished, said Goyal, the health ministry official.

"If doctors are found to be prescribing medicines which are not on the list, or which are branded, then disciplinary action will be initiated," he said.

Free medicine is just one solution to better healthcare in India, where just getting to a state clinic can require a long journey.

Swapnil Yadav, who runs a clinic in Ambegaon, a village 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Mumbai, said India should set up free drug retailers instead of government clinics.

"Patients can approach a private clinic and then get free medicines from government-run medicine shops," he said.

The free generics scheme, which mirrors policies in the states of Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, is expected to be fully operational by the time voters go to the polls for the 2014 general election, when the populist Congress party will seek a third straight victory.

Indian makers of generics such as Dr Reddy's and Cipla are best placed to benefit.

"The move will please the generics manufacturers who stand to gain substantially in competing for contracts," said KPMG's Stirling.

($1

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India should tax air tickets to pay for AIDS drugs - U.N.

Reuters – 5 hrs ago NEW DELHI, June 5 (AlertNet) - Millions of the world's poorest people could have easier access to life-saving drugs if India introduces an air ticket tax to help fund purchases of cheap medicines for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, a senior U.N. official said.

UNITAID, a U.N. agency which negotiates for cheap medicines from pharmaceutical manufacturers to treat deadly diseases, is lobbying countries such as India to join its air ticket levy initiative which began in 2006.

Under the program, countries put a nominal amount on the cost of air tickets which funds UNITAID to buy drugs for patients in the developing world. Ten countries have imposed the levy, generating $200 million annually for cheap medicine.

"What we want in India is a similar system by which a very small contribution which is painless to the traveler can be applied to large numbers of travelers," UNITAID Executive Director Denis Broun told AlertNet in an interview.

"Since air traffic is very high in India, the small amount of levy makes a huge difference to the amount of drugs that we can purchase and the number of poor who can benefit from them."

HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis kill 4.4 million people each year, UNITAID says. Approximately 14.2 million people are in need of anti-retroviral drugs globally, yet more than half cannot afford them.

India's airlines are reeling under a debt load of $20 billion and lost $2 billion last year, as high fuel prices, a weakening rupee and competition kept fares low and costs high.

But the country boasts the fastest growing air passenger market of major economies with 61 million people traveling last year, and still growing.

"People are saying I am coming at the wrongest possible moment. You hear all these arguments, but they are absolutely bogus. It has no impact on government budgets, airline traffic or the economy."

WIN-WIN FOR INDIA

Broun, who met civil aviation and health officials, said he was proposing a tax of 10 rupees (18 U.S. cents) on domestic tickets and $1 on international flights. He said discussions were at a very early stage.

Chile charges $1 per ticket as their levy, while Brazil charges $2 for international flights, he said. French passengers pay one euro for domestic and four euros for international tickets.

Mali, Mauritius, Madagascar, Cameroon, Congo, Niger and South Korea had also implemented air-ticket levies, said Broun.

He said it was a win-win situation for India as 80 percent of the drugs bought by UNITAID are from Indian pharmaceutical firms and some of which were for Indian patients.

"It would be a good thing for India. First of all, Indian patients benefit - 35,000 Indian children are treated for HIV using drugs paid for by UNITAID," he said.

"We buy most of our drugs from India so in a sense what would the tax do? It would go back into the Indian economy into the pharmaceutical sector. So it's difficult to find arguments to say it would be bad."

(AlertNet is a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation. Visit http://www.trust.org/alertnet)

(Additional reporting by Anurag Kotoky; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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India should tax air tickets to pay for AIDS drugs - U.N.

Reuters – 5 hrs ago NEW DELHI, June 5 (AlertNet) - Millions of the world's poorest people could have easier access to life-saving drugs if India introduces an air ticket tax to help fund purchases of cheap medicines for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, a senior U.N. official said.

UNITAID, a U.N. agency which negotiates for cheap medicines from pharmaceutical manufacturers to treat deadly diseases, is lobbying countries such as India to join its air ticket levy initiative which began in 2006.

Under the program, countries put a nominal amount on the cost of air tickets which funds UNITAID to buy drugs for patients in the developing world. Ten countries have imposed the levy, generating $200 million annually for cheap medicine.

"What we want in India is a similar system by which a very small contribution which is painless to the traveler can be applied to large numbers of travelers," UNITAID Executive Director Denis Broun told AlertNet in an interview.

"Since air traffic is very high in India, the small amount of levy makes a huge difference to the amount of drugs that we can purchase and the number of poor who can benefit from them."

HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis kill 4.4 million people each year, UNITAID says. Approximately 14.2 million people are in need of anti-retroviral drugs globally, yet more than half cannot afford them.

India's airlines are reeling under a debt load of $20 billion and lost $2 billion last year, as high fuel prices, a weakening rupee and competition kept fares low and costs high.

But the country boasts the fastest growing air passenger market of major economies with 61 million people traveling last year, and still growing.

"People are saying I am coming at the wrongest possible moment. You hear all these arguments, but they are absolutely bogus. It has no impact on government budgets, airline traffic or the economy."

WIN-WIN FOR INDIA

Broun, who met civil aviation and health officials, said he was proposing a tax of 10 rupees (18 U.S. cents) on domestic tickets and $1 on international flights. He said discussions were at a very early stage.

Chile charges $1 per ticket as their levy, while Brazil charges $2 for international flights, he said. French passengers pay one euro for domestic and four euros for international tickets.

Mali, Mauritius, Madagascar, Cameroon, Congo, Niger and South Korea had also implemented air-ticket levies, said Broun.

He said it was a win-win situation for India as 80 percent of the drugs bought by UNITAID are from Indian pharmaceutical firms and some of which were for Indian patients.

"It would be a good thing for India. First of all, Indian patients benefit - 35,000 Indian children are treated for HIV using drugs paid for by UNITAID," he said.

"We buy most of our drugs from India so in a sense what would the tax do? It would go back into the Indian economy into the pharmaceutical sector. So it's difficult to find arguments to say it would be bad."

(AlertNet is a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation. Visit http://www.trust.org/alertnet)

(Additional reporting by Anurag Kotoky; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Bayer challenges India cancer drug ruling

"German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG has challenged a ground-breaking Indian ruling that allowed a local firm to produce a vastly cheaper copy of its patented drug for kidney and liver cancer. (AFP Photo/Axel Schmidt)" title

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