Feb 07 2023 to Feb 07 2023 7 p.m.

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Price: (Free. RSVP through booking link.) Book/Buy

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

In the last few months, there have been two major tragedies in Gambia and Uzbekistan, leading to the deaths of almost 90 children. In both instances ‘Made in India’ cough syrups have been linked to the deaths. In India itself there have been 5 such tragedies since the 1970s. Even in cases where poorly formulated drugs may not cause deaths, doctors in India regularly doubt whether drugs they are prescribing contain sufficient active ingredients or whether they will dissolve properly in the patient’s body. At the heart of the problem is the “rule of law” and a willingness to regulate the pharmaceutical industry in India under the colonial era – Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940.

To discuss this issue, Dinesh S Thakur and Prashant Reddy T, authors of the recently published The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India, will be in conversation with Dr. Rajani Bhat, interventional pulmonologist and palliative medicine physician, and Samar Halarnkar, Founding Editor of Article 14. The panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

SPEAKERS

Dinesh Singh Thakur - Public Health Activist and Founder, Thakur Foundation

Dinesh Singh Thakur is a trained chemical engineer. He turned whistle-blower against Ranbaxy after witnessing large scale data fraud at the company. His efforts led to Ranbaxy pleading guilty to violating American law before an American court in 2013. The company agreed to pay a penalty of $500 million dollars as a part of its guilty plea. For his actions, he received the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage and the ACFE Cliff Robertson Sentinel Award. Since 2014, he has advocated for reform of India’s colonial era Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940 and has founded an advocacy group called the Citizens for Affordable, Safe & Effective Medicine (CASEM). He is also the founder and President of the Thakur Family Foundation, a philanthropic organisation that provides grants for research on public health and health journalism in India.

Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu - Lawyer

Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu studied law at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and Stanford Law School, California, as a J.N. Tata Scholar. After a stint in the litigation teams at two Delhi-based law firms specialising in intellectual property law, he worked in academia and thinktanks in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Singapore. Over the last few years, he has been advising Dinesh Thakur in his advocacy campaign for the reform of drug regulatory law in India. Prashant is also the co-author of Create, Copy, Disrupt: India’s Intellectual Property Dilemmas (OUP 2017).

Samar Halarnkar - Founding Editor of Article 14

Samar Halarnkar is the founding editor of Article 14 (www.article-14.com), a website focused on issues related to the rule of law in India, and a columnist for Scroll.in. He is also co-founder of the India Love Project (@indialoveproject), an Instagram handle that curates stories of love beyond the boundaries of caste, faith, gender and ethnicity. His work has appeared in a variety of international and national publications, including the New York Times, The Globe and Mail (Canada), and Arab News. A journalist for 31 years and former Managing Editor of the Hindustan Times, Halarnkar was also an editor at The Indian Express and India Today. He has been a visiting lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the Nieman Foundation, Harvard. He has won national awards on investigative and technology reporting and is the author of two books.

Rajani Surendar Bhat - Interventional Pulmonologist & Palliative Medicine Physician

Dr Rajani Surendar Bhat is a physician with additional qualifications as a pulmonologist, intensive care specialist and a palliative medicine physician. She is presently a consultant at SS Sparsh Hospitals, Rajarajeshwari Nagar. She has worked in various other premier tertiary care centres Apollo Hospital and Wockhardt (now Fortis) Hospital, in Bangalore, over the past decade as a consultant. She brings expertise in interventional pulmonology, medical law, ethics and end-of-life care. She also has a deep interest in public health, with a focus on rural primary care, and is a co-convenor of the Community Science Alliance, an initiative of Social Alpha’s health and wellness architecture. She has been a member of the Empowered Committee of the Delhi state administration providing medical advice for state government response to the first wave of COVID-19.