(Reuters) – India’s highest court will hear final arguments starting this week in a landmark case over drug patents that could change the rules for the country’s healthcare sector and potentially curb its global role as a supplier of cut-price generic medicines.The Supreme Court hearing pits Swiss d

(Reuters) – Sanofi’s rare disease unit Genzyme is pulling leukaemia drug Campath to prepare for its launch under a different dosage and as a multiple sclerosis treatment that will be branded as Lemtrada.The withdrawal, meant to prevent the off-label use of Campath as a multiple sclerosis drug, is al

The Yingluck Shinawatra government plans to issue health cards for both Thai and migrant children under the age of six for free basic health care, including vaccinations.Public Health Minister Witthaya Buranasiri said yesterday the government has worked out policy guidelines to improve basic healthc

Patients in England will soon be able to see if their local health authority is offering the latest approved drugs and treatments, as scorecards rating hospitals become public.The scheme, to be rolled out before autumn, aims to create a level playing field for treatments such as IVF.Authorities foun

Fear of being stigmatized as an AIDS patient is still a major barrier to good medical care for pregnant young women in many countries, a new study and a literature review have found.The study, based on a survey of 1,777 women in rural Nyanza Province in Kenya, was published Wednesday in PLoS Medicin

Echinacea, a favourite herbal remedy for parents to give children with the sniffles, should not be given to the under-12s, said the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency last week.The herb, said to reduce symptoms of colds by boosting scavenger cells called macrophages in the immune sys

(Reuters) – Abbott Laboratories Inc won a U.S. panel’s support on Tuesday for wider use of its blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug, Humira, for treating a type of inflammatory bowel disease.A panel of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted 15 to 2 that the benefits of Humira ou

The warning, stemming from an April inspection by U.S. regulators, does not restrict production or product shipments from the plant in La Aurora de Heredia, Costa Rica, Hospira said on Tuesday in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.Among the issues cited by the FDA w

The Disease Control Department is seeking to ease public fears over a disease found in Thailand with HIV-like symptoms, saying it is not contagious.The disease, identified by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and reported in the New England Journal of Medicine last Thursday, has been found

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 greatly expanded women’s access to free preventive services, particularly for sexual and reproductive health . Men didn’t fare nearly as well.The ACA guidelines’ promise of free contraception may have generated the most controversy, but the law also provides many othe