DID YOU KNOW?
- Dr. Reddy's Laboratories and Alvotech are collaborating to develop, manufacture, and commercialize a biosimilar version of Keytruda, a highly successful cancer drug.
- Keytruda (generic name is pembrolizumab), manufactured and marketed by Merck & Co, is the most successful medicine, recording worldwide sales of $29.5 billion in 2024.
- India exports 54 per cent of its pharmaceutical production, of which nearly a third is to the US. Around 85 per cent of the exports to the US comprise formulations, largely generics.
- Generic pharma drugs account for 90 per cent of the prescription sales volume but only 13 per cent of the value spending in the US.
- Contract manufacturing organizations constitute 8 per cent of India's pharma market, with orders expected to improve as global pharma companies seek to lower production costs by outsourcing.
- Heart disease is increasing in India, boosting sales of cardiac drugs. Sales have risen nearly 50% in five years, with younger people getting heart problems.
- Ayvakit/Ayvakyt (avapritinib) is the only approved medicine for advanced and indolent systemic mastocytosis, a rare immunology disease.
- Mastocytosis is characterized by the accumulation and activation of aberrant mast cells in bone marrow, skin, the gastrointestinal tract, and other organs.
- Approximately 3.4 million people in the US have epilepsy, including 400,000 paediatric patients who experience acute repetitive seizures.
- Huntington's disease, which results in chorea, cognitive decline, and behavioural abnormalities, affects approximately 70,000 people in Europe and the US.
- Microbiologically contaminated drinking water can transmit diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio.
- At least 10% of the world's population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater, which can pose health risks due to the presence of pathogens in the wastewater.
- Although cases of Zika virus disease declined from 2017 onwards globally, transmission persists at low levels in several countries in the Americas and other endemic regions.
- Guillain-Barré syndrome is potentially life-threatening. People suffering from it should be treated and monitored as quickly as possible; some may need intensive care.
- Diseases like Chikungunya fever, Zika virus fever, yellow fever, West Nile fever, and Japanese encephalitis are transmitted by mosquitoes.
- The burden of foodborne diseases is substantial: every year almost 1 in 10 people fall ill and 33 million of healthy life years are lost.