Campaigners urge India to resist pressure to change patent laws

The international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has urged the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to resist pressure to change the country’s patent laws so it can retain its status as the “pharmacy of the developing world.”

In a campaign launched on 11 June MSF said that pressure was intensifying from the European Union, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States for India to make it harder for companies to produce cheap, generic drugs on which millions of people around the world rely.

The campaign coincides with the eighth round of negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade agreement taking place 8-13 June in Kyoto, Japan, at which …