New Delhi, 25/12: India will soon commercially produce medicines for 13 “rare diseases” substantially bringing down the treatment cost for such illnesses – sometimes 90-100 times less – as standard therapies based largely on imported medicines cost a few crores per year.
In the first phase, four such medicines have received the marketing approval while another four drugs are under process for approval. These eight medicines will be needed to treat six rare diseases, most of them being genetic in nature.