India’s Clinical Trials

India is known for their acceptance of outsourcing in their country. Due to the low costs of financing trials here, big Pharma has also started to look to India for outsourcing clinical trials. Time recently took a look at the business of CROs in India. Typically, it costs $1 billion to bring any particular drug to the market, and most of that money is devoted to the part of testing on humans. In India, not only is it cheaper to conduct the human trial, but there are also less strict regulations when testing the drugs. There are currently 400 clinical trials taking place in India. Although there are numerous doctors who are proficient in English to support the effort, few of those doctors have graduated from world class institutes, and even fewer of the people working on the clinical trials have been properly trained.

One of the allures of participating in clinical trials for Indian citizens is the healthcare that’s involved. Since India has no public health care system, the care given during a clinical trial is often better than not receiving any at all. Sadly, most of the citizens who sign up for the clinical trials are illiterate. And with Pharma pushing for trials to go faster, often times health standards are not the highest. The booming business will lead to medical breakthrough for India, but how will it affect their citizens in the long term?