Educational Media Reviews Online

According to a Yusuf Hamied, a spokesman from CIPLA, India’s largest generic drug manufacturer, there are 3500 new cases of HIV infection reported in India each day. Indians cannot afford imported drugs, so companies such as CIPLA copy U.S. and European drugs and sell them to Indians at a much lower cost. The Indian government allows this copying, although copied drugs may not be exported. Hamied states that CIPLA has sterile facilities which have been physically inspected numerous times by numerous agencies. Multinational companies’ facilities in India cannot make such a claim.

Hamied is interviewed throughout the documentary, stating that the spread of HIV in India is too great a problem to ignore. Drug multinationals, such as GlaxoSmithKline, spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research and development. Indians should not suffer for what CIPLA feels is price gauging, at least in developing countries. The drug companies cite that there is no infrastructure in India for the safe use of these drugs. Many Indians are illiterate and cannot read the drugs’ directions. If the consumer takes too few of the pills, the person could develop a resistance to the drug which could lead to a drug resistant HIV epidemic. This has already become the case with tuberculosis in India.

This is an excellent film about the imbalance of price scales between developing countries and the United States & Europe, and its impact in developing countries. The film is to be applauded for its objectivity and skillful demonstration of the problem. One criticism of the film is that the subtitles remain on the screen for a very short time as the interviewees speak. That is to say, the text blocks are not very large and move in rapid succession. Nonetheless, this is a fine film which examines the horrid spread of HIV in India.