Indian pharma threatened by COVID-19 shutdowns in China
Patralekha Chatterjee
Published:February 29, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30459-1
As factories in China are closed, India is working to maintain supplies of active pharmaceutical ingredients. Patralekha Chatterjee reports from New Delhi.
India supplies low-cost generic drugs to millions of people, both within and outside the country. But Indian pharmaceutical companies procure almost 70% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for their medicines from China, the world's leading producer and exporter of APIs by volume. As factories in China are closed to try to stem the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak, pharmaceutical companies and the Indian Government are becoming concerned over the vulnerability of the Indian pharmaceutical supply chain.
