South-South Cooperation in Health and Pharmaceuticals: Emerging Trends in India-Brazil Collaborations

Abstract: India-Brazil partnership in the health sector is an area in which the two major economies have increasingly collaborated not only bilaterally, but also in several international forums. This has added new thrust to the process of South-South cooperation. At the bilateral level, both the countries have identified common health sector challenges particularly diseases for joint research. They have established new fellowships for supporting research in their respective economies. Besides, the two countries have been developing partnerships for setting the agenda in multilateral forums like the WHO and WTO as well as in the IBSA and the BRICS forums. Apart from facilitating trade negotiating positions at WTO, for export of drugs and pharmaceuticals to the affected countries, India and Brazil have also launched joint R&D projects in biomedicine both at the bilateral level and also under the aegis of IBSA. This emphasis at IBSA on health diplomacy is rather new and it demonstrates that health is emerging as an important area for joint collaboration among emerging economies. The Section II of the paper provides an overview of the trade linkages between the two economies with special reference to pharmaceutical sector while section III presents the recent initiatives at various levels for expansion of ties in the health sector. Section IV looks into research and entrepreneurial linkages. The conclusions are drawn in the last section.

Post Description

• Publication year: 2011
• Publication Type: Research Paper (Discussion Paper)
• Form of Cooperation: Comprehensive (Lines of credit, grants and loans, and technical assistance).
• Cooperation Context: Multilateral
• Sector: Health
• The Institution (Publication): Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries
• Author (and co-authors): Sachin Chaturvedi 
• Keywords: South-South Cooperation; Health and Pharmaceuticals; India; Brazil; IBSA; research collaborations; entrepreneurial collaborations
• Link: RIS site link