India's pharma industry sets global standard, saves billions for US healthcare, says Union Health Secretary

New Delhi: Union Health Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava said that out of the eight billion vaccine doses produced and distributed globally in the past year, India was responsible for manufacturing half of them. She made this remark during her address at the India Leadership Summit 2024, organized by the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum today.

Punya said India has emerged as a global leader in pharmaceuticals, being the third-largest producer and a key supplier of generic medicines.

"The contribution of the Indian pharmaceutical industry is evidenced by the fact that India has the highest number of US FDA-approved pharmaceutical plants outside of the United States. This is 25 per cent of the total number of US FDA-approved pants outside of the US.

"The medicines from Indian companies, I am told, provided 219 billion USD savings to the US healthcare system in 2022 and a total 1.3 trillion USD savings between 2013 and 2022," she stated.

The country also leads in vaccine production, with a significant share of global manufacturing, underscoring its role as the "pharmacy of the world", she said.

The health secretary said 50 per cent of all vaccines manufactured in the world are from India.

"In the last one year alone, of the eight billion vaccine doses manufactured and distributed across the world, four billion doses were manufactured in India," she said.

To ensure a robust healthcare system, she noted that India has reformed medical education, replacing outdated regulatory frameworks with the National Medical Commission Act and related laws. This has led to a significant increase in medical and nursing college numbers and enrolment, addressing disparities in healthcare professional availability, she said.

Consequently, India is poised to produce a competent health workforce that meets both national and global needs, she noted.

Punya emphasised that government efforts have progressively improved the quality, scale and cost-effectiveness of healthcare in India.

"It is a testament to our expanded healthcare services that the out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE), which is borne entirely by the households, has declined by 25 percentage points as a share of total health expenditure between 2013-2014 and 2021-2022," she said.

On the strong Indo-US Partnership in the health sector, the Union health secretary said, "Our mutual and shared priorities in the field of surveillance, pandemic preparedness and anti-microbial resistance are underscored in the deep partnership between National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the US Centre for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)."

"India appreciates the NCDC and ICMR Field Epidemiology Training Programs (FETP) organised in collaboration with the US CDC. We are happy to inform that over 200 Epidemic Intelligence Services (EIS) officers have been trained so far with another 50 currently undergoing training through various programmes," she added.

India and the US have also agreed to initiate a joint strategic framework for optimising the bio-pharmaceutical supply chain, for optimising and strengthening global supply chains and to reduce dependencies on single-source suppliers through the Bio-5 alliance.

In 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden committed to accelerating the fight against cancer, leading to the inaugural US-India Cancer Moonshot Dialogue launched in August.

Punya highlighted that this initiative aims to enhance the US-India biomedical research cooperation, particularly focusing on cervical cancer. It includes partnerships with institutions like AIIMS and Tata Memorial Hospital and has evolved into the Quad Cancer Moonshot Initiative, she said.

"Reflecting India's vision of 'One World, One Health', a grant of 7.5 million dollars has been dedicated to cancer testing and diagnostics in the Indo-Pacific region. India will also support radiotherapy and cancer prevention efforts in the region, contributing 40 million vaccine doses under GAVI and Quad programs to assist several countries in need of these services," the health secretary said.

Punya noted that the India-US partnership in healthcare exemplifies collaborative efforts to address shared health challenges.