Former Indian president Dr APJ Abdul Kalam advocates affordable healthcare
Speaking recently at the golden jubilee celebration of government pharmacy college, Bangalore, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam spoke about Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD), introduced by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which focuses on collaborative effort to achieve breakthroughs in the world of medicines and bringing down their cost of medicines. He said the OSDD aims to find cure for diseases like tuberculosis and malaria. He said the 'open source' phenomenon has given rich result in the field of software and may give similar result in the area of medical research.
Enumerating the benefits of such an approach, he said the medicines thus discovered would be free from monopoly. He said only generic drugs would be produced and they would be affordable for the common man.
"If the concept of 'open source' (universal access and contribution to a budding idea/technology via free licence) can be applied to developing software, then why not to promoting research and development into finding cure of diseases like malaria?", asked Dr Kalam who is also known as missile man of India.
