How have been your experiences while working in India so far?
The experiences have been good. Personally, I am very happy( smiles). Great to see progress on our key reach out projects. The Lilly NCD Partnership has continuously shown positive outcomes. The Project Uday has been another project of importance. The data on diabetes among rural population as well as urban is available. Some of the interventions have been already tested to check whether things are working. We will be sharing the same with the concerned authorities in the government as well.
Have the changes been implemented in places where it matters?
We don’ t implement ourselves. The idea is to do research and present the report. We developed best practices which were taken into consideration by authorities. Besides we have also seen that whatever we developed got eventually implemented. Similarly, under Project Uday, we made educational training manual and the government seemed interested. We saw the interventions and the implementation on the larger scale. The people, government and industry will be part of the results. Putting aggregate of all the efforts is difficult at this moment.
For Uday project, we will share the data on intervention. We expect to see the results in next two years. It is relatively easer as it is our own project. At NCD Summit, we have gathered some data and you will see the 15 percent of overall work so far. We are tracking the progress and in next two years, we will be able to aggregate most of data and put some tangible results in public domain.
There are many elusive challenges for NCDs in India. How do you look at that?
While the challenges remain, there is good progress on education and prevention of diabetes and other non-communicable diseases. These efforts matter too as it is not always money that should be a priority on any organization’ s list. We believe awareness about diets and lifestyle changes can help too. Government and lot of NGOs too are doing their bid in this direction.
What are the challenges that have been faced by the NCD Lilly Partnership while reaching out to marginal population??
First thing was to get the attention towards noncommunication diseases. But now it is well
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Presence of lot of undiagnosed people is a major issue that requires attention. So the challenge is to identify such population and prevent NCDs. To diagnose, we require more equipment in public health sector.
recognized fact that it is an important area to be addressed. That has happened as everybody is investing in this area.
Presence of lot of undiagnosed people is a major issue that requires attention. So, the challenge is to identify such population and prevent NCDs. To diagnose, we require more equipment in public health sector. There are some basic things at fundamental level that can make difference. Of course, it is complimented by the rise of options for treatment. New portfolios are coming up. We have invested in the maternal and child health curriculum too.
India is being called the diabetes capital of the world. How are you boosting your portfolio to match the requirement?
That is what we are doing as Insulin is our forte. We plan to strengthen our diabetes product portfolio till 2018. Besides injections for diabetes patients, we provide education for would be patients. Therefore, information from our side is not always product related but awareness is our priority too. It is making a big difference already. Our educator program through its comprehensive and sustainable approach provides counseling on diabetes, nutrition and lifestyle management. We also teach appropriate ways to use Lilly injectable devices prescribed by treating physician.
Apart from being the leader in Insulin market, are you planning to expand your horizons in India?
If you look at our global portfolio, we have products across the table. Apart from Insulin, we could launch 20 new products globally. Most of them would be landing in India. We have products in diabetes and oncology. We will be launching products in our segments such as gastric cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis etc. These are some core areas where product pipeline is in the phase I and II. For India, we have global products.
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