NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, September 18, 2014

India’s newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi just launched his first official tour of the United States. Over the next few days, he’s scheduled to meet with national politicians and industry titans all across the country. This is a golden opportunity for our two countries to strategize on ways to grow our long-term economic relationship. And one issue clearly needs to be at the top of the agenda: the flood of low-quality medications flowing from Indian drug manufacturers to foreign markets.

This practice is putting potentially tens of millions of patients at risk. It needs to stop.

Several major Indian drug firms have been caught selling inferior and potentially dangerous medicines. Most of these bad drugs have been sold in low-income countries with lax regulatory oversight.