India is taking a lead in managing the Coronavirus crisis, be it in helping its friendly countries or evacuating its stranded nationals abroad. It is one of the biggest producers of coronavirus treating drug Hydroxychloroquine.
India the Dominant Manufacturer
While Chloroquine phosphate is the typical drug used to treat malaria, Hydroxychloroquine is its inexpensive and less toxic version having the same treating properties. India manufactures 70 percent of the world’s supply of hydroxychloroquine. Further, it accounted for 47% of the drug’s supply in the US in 2019. Two Indian pharmaceutical companies, Zydus Cadila and Ipca Laboratories have ramped up the production of this drug from 3 metric tons per month to 20 to 30 metric tons per month. Sharvil Patel, managing director, Zydus Cadila stated that they will increase their production capacity to 40 to 50 metric tons according to the requirement.
Increase in Production of Hydroxychloroquine
Sudarshan Jain, secretary-general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, said that as the domestic demand for Hydroxychloroquine is just about 3 million tablets a month, India can easily go up to 50 million to 200 million tablets a month. Pharma manufacturers in India stated that will continue to produce the drug as they have enough capacity to do so.
Efforts Appreciated
While WHO’s chief lauded India’s efforts for exporting Hydroxychloroquine, Trump also expressed his gratitude for this humanitarian decision. Officials in India decided to allow export Hydroxychloroquine on case by case basis even before Trump’s retaliatory warning.
India is exporting the drug only to those countries which are in dire need of the same. The Department of Pharmaceuticals will assess the requirement of the demanding country and then evaluate its impact on India. Further, it will decide whether on not to release the ‘go-ahead’ signal.
How effective is Hydroxychloroquine in Treating coronavirus?
There is no scientific evidence proving the success of the drug in either preventing or treating the coronavirus. However, countries like France and China have said that the drug combined with antibiotic azithromycin seemed to help the patients. But the study is too small involving few patients and no controls and hence is inappropriate to establish results.
In all, India’s diplomacy has emerged the nation as a reliable international power at the time of Coronavirus crisis.