The Living Tree

Traditional Medicine and Public Health in China and India

Krishna Ravi Srinivas (Ed.)‚ Guo Lifeng (Ed.)‚ Sachin Chaturvedi (Ed.)‚ Miltos Ladikas (Ed.)

This volume examines the various issues in access to health issues and the role of intellectual property rights in access to drugs and the scope for using traditional medicine in public health. A team of experts from China, India, UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway and the Philippines have contributed to this volume. The volumes examines Health Impact Fund, a mechanism that is proposed to incentivise R&D in neglected diseases and enhance access to drugs, and analyses how China and India can cooperate in traditional medicine sector besides providing reviews on the status of traditional medicine in both countries and the challenges before that sector in China and India in regulation, intellectual property rights and industrial policy. This is a unique volume that makes a significant contribution to the debates on access to medicine and role of traditional medicine in public health.

This volume offers much food for thought and makes a valuable contribution to the literature. I hope that academics, policy makers and others involved in making health more accessible and affordable will find this volume relevant in their work.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
Former President of India 

Hundreds of millions avoidably suffer severe health problems and millions die prematurely each year because they do not get the medicines they need. This book is the result of a tremendous international collaboration seeking to change this. Its underlying idea is that the development and distribution of important medicines should be rewarded not through high, patent-protected mark-ups but through publicly funded rewards based on their actual health impact. This would greatly reduce the prices of advanced medicines and massively increase research into the diseases of the poor as well as the efficiency of the pharmaceutical sector. The book offers a thorough exploration of this idea with special emphasis on its significance for traditional medicines widely used in India and China.
Thomas Pogge
Leitner Professor of Philosophy and
International Affairs, Yale University 

This book offers a highly valuable insight in the Traditional Medicines sector in China and India, and provides a road-map of bilateral activities that are of great importance for the sectoral development in both countries
Wang Fenyu
Vice president, CASTED

This timely and much-needed volume offers innovative responses to global health inequalities and the contemporary global intellectual property regime by examining the experiences of two countries that are deeply engaged in these areas, India and China. Innovative alternatives to the current global patent system are proposed including ways to employ Indian and Chinese medical systems to fill the gap in access to essential treatments. This should be required reading for anyone concerned about the future of global public health.
Murphy Halliburton
PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, 
Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

Sachin Chaturvedi is a Senior Fellow at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), a think tank with the Government of India’s Ministry  of External Affairs. He works on, inter alia, development cooperation policies and South-South cooperation, and science, technology and innovation policies.

Miltos Ladikas currently holds Research Fellow posts at the Centre for Professional Ethics, University of Central Lancashire, UK and the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. His professional background covers the areas of technology assessment, public perceptions of S&T, ethics in S&T policy and science and development.

Guo Lifeng is Associate Professor, Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED), Ministry of Science and Technology, Beijing, China. Her research interests include science and technology polices and IPR issue in International trade.

Krishna Ravi Srinivas is an Associate Fellow with RIS, a policy research think tank based in New Delhi, India. He has written on, inter alia, IPRs, open source and open innovation models, traditional knowledge, and climate change and technology transfer.

Fatima Alvarez-Castillo

Rosa Cordillera Castillo

David Coles

Lynn J. Frewer

T.C. James

Jing Liu

Jon Pedersen

Wu Qunhong

K. Satyanarayana

Sun Xiaoyun

Liu Yan

Li Zhe

Gao Zhiqian