Brand Confusion in Indian Pharma

Last week I received a frantic call from Dubai. The call was from the cell phone of my MD but the caller was his wife. They had left for Dubai just tThat morning. Due to some goof up, she couldn’t locate the pouch which contained all the medicines. My MD is on a host of drugs for hypertension and diabetes. In addition, he was consuming medicines to facilitate digestion and tension relievers too. When she tried to buy the medicines, whose brand names she had remembered well, she was in for a rude shock, that none of the brands she had mentioned were available with the chemist in Dubai. She had left her cell back home, which contained the Doctor’s contact details.

She started reeling out the brand names to find whether I knew its generic composition, for she knew about my pharma background. I couldn’t help her since my knowledge about the medicines was at least two decades old and the Indian pharmaceutical industry had grown big without my help, introducing many new drugs. Left with no other alternative I barged into the consultation chamber of my MD’s physician for help. My MD’s wife picked up the cell on the first ring and I handed over the phone to the doctor. The physician talked with the pharmacy attendant at Dubai and the matter was settled to the relief of everyone.

I realized then, that the pharmaceutical industry in India had not grown in quality, however much they have apparently grown in size and prosperity. The old tactics were at play even now. When any new drug is invented and put into the market in western countries, the same would be swiftly copied in India and sold under a different brand name. It is very easy in India. We follow what is known as “process patenting” and not “product patenting” as followed in USA and many European countries.

When a new drug is invented and put into the market in USA or UK after lengthy formalities the molecular formula becomes open document. Once it is known any person with the requite knowledge of chemistry could synthesize the chemical through a different process other than the patented one in India. Many pharmaceutical companies in India market their own brand names for a single chemical drug. Many original inventions are driven to a corner by these me too brands, claiming a huge price advantage. These brands are akin to the pirated books we get on the foot-path; it has everything other than the rewards reaching the author.

In the USA, brand names are available only for the original inventions and all other companies have to market the drugs only in generic name, after a stipulated time period. When a drug is successfully launched in USA or UK it is replicated and marketed in different brand names in India. These look alike drugs look alike in brand names too. “Viagra” would morph into “Penegra”, “Zenegra” or for that matter “Zeebra”. The Zebra with an extra “E”, which stands for that extra virility. Many single ingredient drugs are marketed in India under different brand names, inconveniencing many patients.

My father was on a particular drug, which he was consuming while in Tamil Nadu, which was not available at Bangalore. It took some time for me to ascertain its chemical name so that I could get the “substitute” here. Some doctors lose their cool when a brand prescribed him/her is substituted by the chemists, not realizing that what they have prescribed in itself is only a substitute many a times.

There are not less than 50 brands each for “Enelepril” a drug prescribed for hypertension, or another anti hypertensive “Atenelol” or “Metformin” which is prescribed specially for obese diabetics. In India a failed attempt was made in the 80’s, when” Tagamet” was not allowed to be marketed under its exclusive international brand name. Many Indian companies instead introduced this drug under its generic name “cimetidine” and it met with an orchestrated failure.

From then on all the companies reverted to their age old comfortable game of re-invention, euphemizing it as reverse engineering. Certainly it has moved many pharmaceutical companies in the reverse direction, engineering or otherwise.